


the devil in camp

by JasperIsAFanboy



Category: Blood Drive (TV), Ravenous (1999)
Genre: (see chapter notes), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Murder, some stuff is only there for a chapter so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:07:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29929038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: or, what happens when two supernatural cannibals get forced into a road race where the cars run on human blood?ravenous/blood drive crossover.
Relationships: John Boyd/Ives, Rasher/Julian Slink





	1. the last americans

**Author's Note:**

> so one day i say to myself, 'jasper my dude, u know what would be an absolutely baller crossover? a blood drive/ravenous crossover, that's what.' it only took me roughly a year and a half to write but here it is. yeehaw. 
> 
> note: if ur not familiar w blood drive, that's fine, since tbh it's based more on the fanon my bf d__T and i built than actual canon. i do recommend reading our stuff since there's a fair bit that'll make more sense that way, but like. i'm not ur dad, do as ur little heart desires.
> 
> fic title and all chapter titles are from american murder song.
> 
> content warnings for this chapter: non-explicit mentions of cannibalism, blackmail

Had anyone asked John Boyd where he thought America would be near the end of the twentieth century, what he thought would happen, he would not have said “Torn apart by a fracking accident.” His idea of mining was still men descending into the bowels of the earth, toiling and searching in the inky darkness of narrow winding tunnels for the gleam of precious metals or stones. Using water to mine for oil and gasoline is not something that would occur to a nineteenth-century mind. 

Then again, Boyd would never have imagined he’d survive a bear trap and a punctured lung after a vicious fight with a borderline indestructible monster right out of mythology. He certainly doesn’t quite know how he survived; the immediate few days after the trap are a hazy blur of agony and the taste of iron and he has no other memory of them. That Ives survived as well seemed an equally absurd thought, as Boyd had heard his death-rattle and was sure he’d been dead under him, but survived Ives had nonetheless. Ives is a large part of how he’d survived, however: he must’ve been the one to drag him from Fort Spencer. Boyd awoke days later in a miserable little trapper’s hovel somewhere in the mountains, Ives’ flesh in his mouth. Apparently Ives really had been serious about securing his company and companionship. 

All Ives ever said about the time Boyd spent either unconscious or delirious was that Ives had kept him alive with his own flesh, and that it had been touch and go for much of that time. Even for what he was, his injuries were nothing to shake off. Ives did not say how he survived, or whose body went towards restoring what Ives gave to Boyd, and Boyd is determined not to ask. He knows it would’ve been sheer spite driving Ives, and he’d prefer not to think about that. Neither of them bear scars.

Further along the list of unlikelihoods Boyd has encountered in his life is the fact that he has come to accept his changed nature. Perhaps it was consuming so much of Ives, some transference of Ives’ own monstrousness, but when Boyd came back to clarity and the knowledge of just what he was eating, he didn’t push Ives away or try to kill them both. He simply gave in. It was a kind of cowardice, he knew, to give in to that which he had so fiercely resisted, but when had cowardice ever not been his foremost trait? He was too much of a coward to kill himself, too much of a coward to resist what he’d become. Regaining his courage in the last moment, being willing to make the ultimate sacrifice only for it to mean nothing in the end was just too much. He was tired of fighting, tired of coming so close to death only to be snatched from the brink. He’d tried to do the right thing, had given his life to do it, and had failed. It was enough to make a cynic of any man, let alone one with such a history of trauma.

And besides, there was never any real going back; to reject what he was meant certain death, and death had lost its appeal after he’d avoided it so many times. Boyd’s change had begun in that pile of corpses in Mexico; resisting Ives had been a futile, lost cause right from the start. Ives hadn’t started the change in him, merely accelerated it and, in the end, convinced him to embrace it. There was _never_ any real going back.

That they’d stayed together through the years was something of a surprise too, given that Ives is first and foremost an extremely irritating man when he wants to be, but Boyd has never been surprised that they ended up in bed. Leaving aside the fact that they were the only two of their kind in the world, Boyd has always been well aware of his attraction to men. Certainly he’s had women, but he’s always wanted men, an undercurrent of desire he spent most of his life before Ives trying to ignore. 

And Ives is an attractive man: he’s handsome, well-spoken, intelligent—Boyd had been attracted to him from the moment Ives first awoke in the fort, at least physically. He tried to bury that attraction in that stinking little hole beneath the pines, after he learned Ives’ true nature, tried to leave it to rot with Reich’s putrid corpse, but it was as stubborn as Ives himself. It simmered for years, boiled over one night in Gettysburg. Ives had brought two soldiers back to their house with the intention of killing them, and something in the ensuing violence changed them, some primal connection between Boyd and Ives finally crystallized. Their blood burning hot in their veins, they came together like a tidal wave meeting a cliffside. Before they knew it they were rutting on the kitchen floor like animals while the soldiers’ gutted remains cooled above them on the table, rough and passionate and almost more fighting than fucking. 

Boyd, in his usual way, started to agonize about it almost as soon as he’d come. He even avoided Ives as much as possible for the next few days. But they’d long been bound together with unbreakable cords of blood and violence, both the violence they inflicted on others and the violence they’d once inflicted on each other. They couldn’t be separate for long. A week later Boyd took Ives to bed with no hesitation or catalyzing violence—he spread his legs for Ives out of plain desire. Waking next to him the following morning, their legs tangled and Ives’ arm over Boyd’s waist, felt like the logical progression of their relationship. They’d become something like lovers and would thereafter remain so.

Boyd will never be as enthusiastic about their diet as Ives is, but he no longer fights it. He still finds it somewhat surprising that he’s accepted it at all, but repetition breeds indifference; only occasionally does his conscience offer any protest that he’s more or less contentedly accepted a lifestyle he’d railed so hard against, and it feels like a token effort these days. He’s used to it now, and if there’s one thing he’s learned about humanity through the years, it’s that they can get used to anything if they endure it long enough.

But the fracking and the Scar? That’s truly surprising.

Ives loves it, of course. In that first breakdown of law and order, he’d wanted to go deep in the ruins and set up on the edge of the Scar as some kind of wasteland cannibal king, not unlike his dreams for Fort Spencer. Boyd steadfastly and immediately refused. Leaving aside the rumors of severe radiation and mutant animals and worse around the Scar, Boyd had no interest in lording it over a colony of cannibals. Ives is quite enough company. Even in 1847, Boyd had been adamant that if he stayed with Ives, they would remain only two. If Ives went to the Scar and tried to expand their numbers, Boyd would leave him. Ives, who was ultimately too scared of being alone, eventually conceded, unwilling to lose Boyd. (Being alone seems to be the one thing Ives fears.) And, too, Heart Enterprises moved quickly enough to pick up America’s pieces, their pet police forces dispatched to restore some semblance of normalcy. It isn’t much—Heart was far more concerned with protecting their corporate interests than protecting the average citizen. That’s fine as far as Boyd and Ives are concerned; so long as they don’t kill anyone connected in any major way to Heart, they’re safe.

Their life continues much as it had since the nineteenth century: hunting, hiding in plain sight, publicly living with whatever label on their relationship attracts the least attention while privately screwing each others’ brains out every night. Of late they’ve been living as lovers, openly and without censure or retaliation. It’s comforting, in a way, though Boyd would hesitate to label them lovers in any traditional sense, even though they’ve been fucking for over a hundred years. He doesn’t know what they are, although he realizes after so many years there’s some amount of real affection. Ives can be charming, and Boyd would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t find some of Ives’ habits genuinely endearing: the way he laughs when taken by surprise, the way he purrs Boyd’s name in bed, the sheer joy with which he approaches life. To this last, the melancholy Boyd is drawn like a moth to the flame, drawn to a man who possesses what he himself lacks. Living with Ives for so long, Boyd has managed to siphon off a little of that ability, a little of Ives’ joie de vivre. He will never be happy-go-lucky, but he isn’t morose, not like he was. Boyd knows his feelings run deeper than he’s willing to admit, but he’ll live in denial as long as he can if it means he doesn’t have to confront truths about himself he’d rather ignore.

They’re content with life by and large, and even now it’s a good life. Even in the economic ruins, they’re more than comfortably well off; a century and a half teaches very creative accounting and the value of multiple Swiss accounts. But Ives being Ives, eventually he gets to feeling ornery. He doesn’t restrict his hunting to indigents and the lost, not entirely; sometimes he takes ordinary people from ordinary suburbs, the kinds of people with homes and families and reliable jobs. People who, when they go missing, are genuinely missed. Ives is at least careful not to take too many of these people, but Boyd wishes he didn’t take them at all. Still, nothing seems to happen at any point; suspicion never seems to fall on the two nice young men who share a lovely home in such a good neighborhood. Sure, they’re queer, but they’re so gentle. They wouldn’t hurt a fly. Against Boyd’s better judgement, they become complacent.

And then Julian Slink walks into Boyd’s office.

Neither of them _need_ to work, but it looks good on paper and keeps them from getting too bored. Boyd has lately been working as a therapist specializing in trauma recovery. Ives thinks it’s hilarious; he himself works in a high-end barber shop (or what passes for one these days), and he thinks this is also hilarious. It took him weeks to stop making Sweeney Todd and Hannibal Lecter jokes. But Boyd’s license to practice is genuine; he seems to have something of a knack for it. His practice is small, but it suits him well enough. His office isn’t large, either, merely a waiting room with space for a handful of chairs and the room where he sees his clients. It’s to this latter room that Julian Slink arrives out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning on a cloudless day, breezing in during Boyd’s lunch. He stands in the doorway with all the entitlement of a visiting god, an absolute eyesore of a man in an eye-watering pair of plaid pants and a paisley waistcoat, top hat tilted rakishly to one side and blackened teeth bared in a Cheshire cat’s grin. He’s a mockery of the century Boyd grew up in, tasteless and tacky and so supremely confident it’s off-putting.

“Good afternoon,” he says, seemingly oblivious to Boyd’s shock. “I have a proposition I think you’ll very much want to hear.”

Boyd just stares at him over a spoonful of leftover stew. A chunk of meat that was very much not beef falls from the spoon and plops back into the bowl. He lowers the spoon. “Excuse me?”

Slink sweeps his hat from his head and executes a flawless, flamboyant bow. “I am Julian Slink, master of ceremonies, god of the stage, amateur swordsman, and the creative genius behind the Blood Drive! I come to you, sir, with an offer. Join the Blood Drive, and no one will arrest you or your handsome boyfriend for multiple homicides, kidnapping, desecration of corpses, and cannibalism.” Slink’s artificially blackened grin has far too many teeth.

Boyd stood. “Sir, I have to ask you to leave. Right now.”

“Oh, come now, don’t be obstreperous. I have agents keeping an eye on your boyfriend as we speak, and at a word from me they’ll be on him like flies on shit.” Slink reaches into the breast pocket of his frock coat and withdraws a small packet. He tosses it to Boyd’s desk. “I have all the proof I need.”

Staring at Slink suspiciously, still more confused and mad than anything, Boyd picks up the packet. He leafs through the packet, and his confusion and anger fade out in mere instants, replaced by dread and sickness. It’s all photos of people he and Ives have consumed, all taken at the exact moment Boyd or Ives snared them as prey. Some are even shots of one or the other leading their victims into their home. It’s more than damning, it’s a full set of coffin nails. Boyd looks up at Slink, having dropped in shock back into his chair.

“Join my race, and the originals and all my copies of those disappear,” Slink says. “You don’t even have to win. Just compete.”

Boyd rakes his hand through his hair, drags his palm over his face. He’s willing to agree right away to protect Ives; he cannot live without him, cannot face his own monstrousness alone. He needs Ives. But Ives will need convincing.

“I need time,” Boyd croaks.

Slink’s grin returns, a nasty sharp-edged thing that reminds Boyd of the bear trap at Fort Spencer. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours,” he says. “Feel free to keep those, I have plenty of copies. See you tomorrow, John.” Slink tips his hat, turns on his heel, and leaves. Boyd doesn’t even realize that Slink had called him by a name he hasn’t used in a century and a half.

He finishes his day in a daze. He has only two appointments that afternoon, and thankfully they’re both in good enough shape that Boyd can, essentially, ignore them in favor of zoning out in quiet panic. Once the second one leaves, he decides to leave as well. He’ll be early getting home, but Ives won’t notice or care. Miraculously, he makes it home in one piece even though he doesn’t pay the slightest attention to the road. The one good thing about the state of the world is that with gasoline so expensive, few people are driving anymore. The road is almost empty his entire drive home. It’s probably the only reason why he doesn’t wind up in an accident. Still feeling vaguely like he’s wrapped in a fog, he parks in the garage and heads in, operating entirely on auto-pilot; he barks his shin on the hall table and almost walks into a doorframe once or twice. 

But he snaps well out of it when he reaches the living room and finds Ives sprawled on the sofa, one leg slung along the back, clad only in faded blue jeans. His hair, long now like it was when they met, hangs loose and a little damp to his shoulders. There’s a mug sitting on the coffee table, empty and smelling very much unlike coffee or tea. He makes a very attractive picture, one Boyd doubts is accidental, and it sets a stab of want in Boyd’s heart. Ives is reading, of all things, “The Book of Mormon.”

“Where on earth did you get that?” Boyd asks as he goes to the sofa. He lifts Ives’ leg out of the way and sits, taking Ives’ foot into his lap to rub his ankle.

Ives looks over at him and gives him a lazy, catlike grin. He closes the book, tosses it to the coffee table before stretching luxuriously and giving Boyd a good eyeful of his compact body. Time has left them both untouched, left them the same as they were at Fort Spencer, and Boyd very much appreciates this. Ives lowers his lashes in a very clear “come hither” look.

“A pair of nice young Mormon boys came to the door this morning,” he says. His accent has not faded in all the years they’ve lived in America. “Talked them into coming inside to chat since it was pissing down rain.” He sits up and pulls Boyd into a slow, lingering kiss that tastes of blood. “They’re draining in the basement. Such toothsome lads.” He kisses Boyd again. “You know I’ve always found the god-fearing to be very tasty morsels.” Boyd thinks of Toffler, his bones long picked clean and abandoned to the elements. “We can share them later. Right now, I’m of a mind to indulge a different appetite.”

Boyd knows, as Ives slings himself into his lap, that he needs to talk to Ives about Slink and the coercion disguised as an offer. That he needs to make clear the sword hanging over them by a thread, and the man holding a knife to that thread. But Ives’ kisses taste like iron and he’s so sweet and pliant in Boyd’s arms, so warm and affectionate when he wants to be. Boyd’s hands slide down the bare smooth expanse of Ives’ back to cup his ass, making Ives purr and press against him. Boyd’s own appetite for Ives is rising more quickly than his anxiety about Slink. So for now, he forgets the long-buried dead and the threat of that godawful man in his office, pushes Ives onto his back, and commits to losing himself in the one man he trusts. 

Besides, Ives will be more tractable if he feels well-fed and well-fucked.

As they lay in bed later that night, Boyd stares at the ceiling, wide awake, while Ives dozes against him. Ives’ head rests on his chest, hand on Boyd’s belly, and Boyd is idly stroking his hair. He looks down at Ives.

“Ives,” he says. They rarely call each other by their Christian names, unless it’s by the false ones they use in public. (For the moment, they’re Robert Seward and Charles Renfield by Ives’ choice, and Boyd regrets it every time he lets Ives choose their names. They’re always either infamous serial killers or characters from gothic horror novels. Ives likes to think he’s clever.)

Ives stirs. “Hm?” He sounds drowsy and content. Boyd has picked his moment well.

“I wish you hadn’t taken those Mormon boys,” Boyd says.

Ives lifts his head. He fixes Boyd with a stare that loses none of its power to sleepy satiation. Their room is dimly lit by the streetlight on the corner, and in the faint orange light Ives’ eyes look very black.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting indigestion,” he says, pressing hard on Boyd’s belly as if reminding him how Boyd had not hesitated to sink his own teeth in the Mormon boys’ flesh.

“It’s been a hundred and fifty years, Ives, don’t you think it’s a little late for indigestion?“

Ives eyes him a moment longer, then eases the pressure of his hand. He strokes Boyd’s belly instead. “Then what is it?”

Boyd hesitates for a moment, then tells him everything. Ives’ expression doesn’t change, but his hand slows and eventually stills. He doesn’t speak when Boyd finishes. There’s a long, uncomfortable stretch of silence.

“Ives?” Boyd asks finally. “Ives, please say something—“

“Why didn’t you just kill him?” Ives asks. He sits up and glares down at Boyd. “You could have just killed him, we could have left the country.”

“You think his agents would have let us? He’s watching us like a hawk. Hell, his agents probably just watched us fucking! He showed me pictures, Ives, extremely damning ones. He could send us to prison for the rest of our lives with just a quarter of them. And his agents would hunt us down, I’m sure—“

“Oh, please,” Ives scoffs. “As if that should’ve stopped you. You should have just killed that Slink bastard and come straight home. We’d have had enough of a head start to get halfway to Canada before anyone missed him—“

“I don’t want to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder—”

“Better that than to turn coward again!”

That’s a low blow. Anger flashes hot in the pit of Boyd’s stomach. He sits up too and clenches a fist in Ives’ hair to yank his head back. Ives hisses like a cat. With a hand on Ives’ chest, Boyd forces him onto his back so that Boyd looms over him. Ives is a little smaller than Boyd, and it’s an advantage Boyd has no qualms about using against him. Ives glares up at him, and while normally he likes Boyd pulling his long hair and pushing him around there is no lust in his gaze now, only anger. His narrow nostrils flare as he breathes hard. On impulse Boyd puts his hand over Ives’ throat, holds just tight enough to warn Ives not to try Boyd’s patience. He feels the bob of Ives’ throat as Ives swallows hard.

“You of all people should know that’s not it,” Boyd growls. He releases Ives’ hair and bars his arm across Ives shoulders with his full weight. It’s a position Ives could probably get out of fairly easily, but it’s also an echo of their embrace in the bear trap and Ives clearly knows this. “If you… if we weren’t what we are, we’d both have the scars to prove I’m no coward, not anymore. Don’t mistake the man I am now for the man I was then.”

“Still, you—“ Ives starts.

Boyd cuts him off by biting his throat. Ives lets out a choked little whimper and his hips jerk involuntarily against Boyd’s. Boyd holds the bite for several seconds, reveling half in the power of holding Ives at his mercy and half in the way Ives’ cock is filling against his hip. Ives has always liked an edge of violence in their sex, biting and scratching and roughness, and biting his throat never fails to turn him on. Boyd is not above using that against him either. He releases him and Ives takes a great gasping breath like he’d forgotten how to work his lungs.

“There is no cowardice in refusing to fight a losing battle, and killing Slink wouldn’t have solved anything,” Boyd half-growls. He’s a little out of breath himself, his anger and anxiety and lust mingling in uncomfortable ways, but the scale is tipping further towards lust by the second. Ives is hot under him, his cock pressed against Boyd’s belly. “We enter the race, we finish, we leave free and clear. We don’t even have to win. We just have to run the race.”

“Fine,” Ives grits out. “Fine.” He bucks his hips against Boyd’s. “Now you’d better get me off and get me off good for this.”

The next day, Slink returns at exactly the same time as before, twenty-four hours precisely. This time his pants are less searing, though still an uncomfortably loud plaid, paired with a grey waistcoat and a paisley cravat. Ives will either love him or despise him, Boyd thinks. Slink doesn’t speak, just lifts an eyebrow.

Boyd nods.

“Excellent!” Slink claps his hands. His blackened grin splits his face again as he withdraws a card case from his breast pocket and passes a card to Boyd. It’s of good quality, matte black card-stock with gleaming white lettering that reads, “JULIAN SLINK—GOD OF THE STAGE” on the front, the red Heart logo tucked discreetly in one lower corner. On the back, written in silver ink and an incredibly precise Palmer script, is a date, a time, and a set of coordinates. “Be there, or be square and a wanted felon. Ciao!” He tips his hat and leaves.

Once the door to his waiting room closes, Boyd tucks the card into his pocket, where it burns like a live coal. He feels like he just signed a deal with the devil. He wonders just what he’s gotten himself and Ives into.

No going back now, though.


	2. the black wagon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> let's get this mayhem party started.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha i gave my bf and i cameos in this one, no points for spotting us.
> 
> content warnings: gore, grievous bodily harm due to engines literally eating people

Rasher has taken shelter from the California sun in a doorway of the ruined warehouse, seeking the comfort of shadows. It’s a good spot—it allows him to see anyone approaching from a considerable distance while still hiding him from view and keeping the sun out of his eyes and off his black leather jacket and corset. The corset, of course, is necessary, but why he had to wear the jacket in California of all places… he fishes his cigarettes and lighter from his back pocket. The glow of the flame catches on his strong cheekbones as he lights up. He takes a deep drag off his cigarette and melts a little further into the dark. He rarely smokes anymore unless it’s to make or illustrate a point, the maw doesn’t like it, but he needs something to do with his hands. Blowing smoke rings, he looks towards the horizon. His eyes narrow slightly, and he bends to pick up the binoculars sitting by his feet. The binoculars don’t reveal any details, but they do make clear a dust cloud: likely an arriving racer. He pulls himself from his woolgathering and flicks the cigarette away half-smoked before the car gets close enough to spot the cherry end. 

The black Alfa Romeo sedan that arrives and pulls up to the dock a few minutes later is well-cared for, befitting its hefty price tag. Rasher wonders who’s in it. He didn’t think there were any rich idiots in the race this year, but he’s been wrong before. It’ll be a shame to see its engine stripped out and replaced. Rasher waits, patient as a cat, to see if anyone gets out. After a moment the driver’s side window rolls down, and a long-haired man leans out.

“Hey! Anyone there?” he calls in a Scottish brogue.

Rasher ducks into the shadows and heads for a hole in the wall that allows him to leave the warehouse unseen. It lets him sneak up on the car from its blind spots, so he comes to the window as if appearing out of the dust. It’s a particular favorite trick of his.

“Gimme your eyes,” he says, looming suddenly over the open window. 

The Scot doesn’t startle, exactly, but he does go stiff and fix Rasher with eyes so dark brown they’re nearly black. “Try and take them,” he says, an edge of a snarl in his voice. There’s something in his gaze, some danger barely concealed, and for a moment Rasher wonders if sneaking up on him was really wise. 

“Charles,” the other man, an American, says in a tired voice. “Go easy.”

This must be Charles Renfield and Robert Seward, then. Julian had told him to watch out for them. Rasher still needs to confirm their identities, and he hopes Renfield will decide to cooperate. He really doesn’t want to force the issue. He holds up his retinal scanner and gives it a little wave.

Renfield glances towards Seward, then looks up at Rasher. One eyebrow quirks as if telling Rasher to get on with it. Rasher holds his scanner just barely close enough for it to pick up Renfield’s eyes. He doesn’t want to lean any closer to Renfield than he needs to, he wouldn’t put it past him to try and drag him through the window. Renfield is like a coral snake, all bright warning danger, a predator uninterested in hiding his fangs. He can feel Renfield trying to read Rasher as he himself is read, and Rasher suspects and hopes he’s drawing the wrong conclusions that Rasher deliberately cultivates: weak, non-threatening as an easily snapped twig, no one of consequence. Prey, in other words. It’s a game he’s played since his youth, relying on his awkwardly skinny body to create a false sense of superiority in others. It’s hard to be intimidated by a man who looks like a strong breeze would snap him in half. Rasher doesn’t like appearing to be prey around this man, but he’s not in the mood for some kind of alpha predator pissing match. He never is. If Renfield tries anything, he’ll learn quick enough that Rasher isn’t to be fucked with, but hopefully for the moment he’ll leave him alone.

The scanner pings, confirming Renfield’s identity, and Rasher goes around to the passenger window. It rolls down to reveal Seward, longer of face, with bright blue eyes and a world-weariness Rasher immediately mistrusts. There’s something unsettling about the man, for all that he reads as less edgy than Renfield. It’s in his gaze too, Rasher thinks, something like a riptide under a placid surface. If Renfield is a coral snake, this man is a cottonmouth hiding in the undergrowth. Rasher respects that. The scanner confirms him as one Robert Seward, and Rasher steps away and back to Renfield’s side. He presses the garage door opener in his pocket as he walks, opening the bay door to the Stygian blackness inside the warehouse. 

“Drive ’til you see running lights,” Rasher says. “Follow them.” He backs away, watches Renfield put the car in gear and drive into the warehouse. He doesn’t turn his headlights on. His taillights slowly disappear, swallowed by the gloom. 

Rasher doesn’t like them. They don’t feel right at all. He wishes Julian could be a little less mysterious about his reasons for choosing racers, then sighs and pulls a walkie talkie from his belt and presses the button. 

“Hey, anyone listening?” he asks. “You better be, this is your lord and master speaking, someone fuckin’ answer.”

“What’s up, road boss?” someone asks a moment later. 

“Someone get over here and take over with the scanner for me. Slink wanted me to tell him when Seward and Renfield got here, and they just did. By the way, I don’t trust them, so y’all watch your backs around them.” There’s a chorus of affirmatives, some of which sound nervous: if Rasher admits to mistrusting racers, there must be something really wrong. “So who’s coming up to take over here?”

“I’ll be up in a bit,” says a different voice. Rasher doesn’t know who it is—he hasn’t put names, voices, and faces together yet, there’ve been a number of new people to learn. This year didn’t attract many returning roadies. 

“Thanks. Scanner’ll be in the doorway to the left of the dock.”

Rasher puts the retinal scanner in the doorway he’d been haunting and goes into the factory. He takes a much shorter route than the one he told Renfield to follow, one which takes him straight to the site of the season’s inaugural Mayhem Party. It’s a hive of activity—roadies bustle around rigging the lights and speakers, building Julian’s stage, reassembling the neon atop the Suck Bus. There’re a few cars placed around the pit, their drivers lounging about, eyeing each other up like wolves. Rasher doesn’t doubt there’ll be a fight before long, but it’s not his problem. He knows a few of the bouncers are lurking in the shadows, they’ll move in to avert any real trouble. Rasher skirts the edges and heads for the crew’s trailers. The maw rumbles as he passes the fuel truck; it’s not hungry, he fed it that morning, but he’ll need to feed it again sooner rather than later. The emotions of the race, the energy, the organized chaos, all put too much stress on it and ramp up its hunger. At any rate, better to err on the side of caution than risk a repeat of season three.

He reaches Julian’s trailer and mounts the steps. He doesn’t bother knocking, just ambles on in. Julian stands nude before his skull-topped mannequin, assembling his outfit for the evening: black silk waistcoat with a red brocade pattern, trousers of charcoal, red, black, and white plaid, a crimson tail coat with gunmetal chain epaulets. He seems to be having difficulty choosing a cravat: he keeps switching between wine-red lace and artfully tattered black silk. Rasher comes up behind him and presses against him, puts his chin on his shoulder and his hands on his hips. Julian shivers at the touch of the cold metal on Rasher’s corset, belt, and jacket. He turns his head to Rasher slightly.

“Which one?” he asks. He holds up the cravats.

“Black silk,” Rasher says, knowing full well Julian will choose the red lace instead.

Sure enough, Julian drapes the red lace around the neck of his mannequin. He looks more directly at Rasher and quirks an eyebrow in question. 

“Seward and Renfield are here,” Rasher says. “Black Alfa Romeo.”

“Ah, good,” Julian purrs, grinning like the cat that got the cream and the mouse, and killed the dog too. “You just wait, doll, we’re going to have some fun this season!”

“I still don’t know why you wanted them.”

“Because, my dear monster, think how much fun they’ll be! A pair of wendigos in a race where the cars run on human blood!”

“A pair of—Julian, wendigos are myths!” There’s more than that to unpack in Julian’s answer—Rasher knows he’s hiding something—but for now, Julian’s insistence that Seward and Renfield are mythical beings will be plenty. Sure, they have the same last names as characters from Dracula, but even if they were named Vlad Dracul that wouldn’t make them vampires. Rasher knows there’s a certain hypocrisy in his disbelief, given the maw. But the maw is one thing; it’s verifiable, quantifiable, a direct and physical result of something in the real world. A pair of mythological beings is something else entirely. Julian, however, doesn’t seem put off by Rasher’s skepticism. He just grins.

“Au contraire,” he says, singsong. “Remember that old fort we found in the mountains on our last scouting trip?”

It was barely a remnant of a fort, only a toppled iron grave marker and the foundations of crude frontier buildings overgrown with weeds left to mark its existence, but Rasher remembers the place. “Yeah.”

“Well, I did a little digging. Turns out it was abandoned just before the Gold Rush due to a catastrophe of considerable proportions.” Julian gives Rasher a devilish grin. He leans close. “Everyone there died,” he says, with all the relish of a teenager telling a ghost story at summer camp. “The original soldiers, a general and his aide, soldiers sent to investigate their deaths—everyone. Something came out of the woods every night and killed them, one by one. I found the personnel records. There were two transfers just before the deaths, a Captain John Boyd and a Colonel Ives. The records on Ives were incomplete, though, I couldn’t find his forename. Lost to time, I suspect. I at least got descriptions, and they match Renfield and Seward. The only person from the fort to show up in later records is a native woman who was only identified as Martha—found her death certificate. Old age, 1888. Died a spinster in San Miguel.”

“And, even though all that happened at least a hundred years ago—“

“A hundred and fifty—“

“Okay, a hundred and fifty years, you think Seward and Renfield are the two men I just scanned into the race.”

“I do.”

Julian sounds extremely certain, and Rasher decides to shelve it. There’s no discussing mortality with a man who reincarnates in minutes into one of many spare bodies every time he dies, regardless of how he dies. He wonders how Julian managed to find two men who’re supposedly almost two hundred years old using records that wouldn’t have had any kind of visual identification, let alone why he’s convinced that Renfield and Seward are those men, but that’d be almost as impossible a discussion. So he settles for something easier: “Why?”

Julian just taps the side of his nose. Rasher sighs. He kisses Julian’s neck before nosing along his jaw. If Julian doesn’t want to share his thoughts, he won’t. “I don’t trust them,” he says after a moment. “Wendigos or not, they don’t feel right.” 

“That’s probably wise, they’re not trustworthy in the slightest.” Julian turns back to his mannequin. “I did basically blackmail them. I fully expect some form of retaliation from them at some point.” He sounds as flippant as only an immortal can about the prospect.

Rasher, who is far less immortal than Julian, makes a face. “Ugh. If they try anything, can I eat them?”

“Not all of them. Feel free to eat a limb, I want to see if they’ll grow it back.”

Rasher doesn’t even want to know. “Deal.”

“Good.” Julian steps out of Rasher’s grasp and fetches his feathered collar to place atop the mannequin. It’s missing the bright orange feathers and ten-inch teeth that had adorned it throughout all of the last season.

“You took Suzie’s teeth and feathers off,” Rasher says, tilting his head.

“Yes. It doesn’t feel right wearing them without her here.” Julian sounds wistful. To keep Heart from taking back the genetically engineered _Tyrannosaurus Rex_ they’d dumped on the race last season, they’d contrived to have her taken in secret to a roadie’s family ranch. He’d been the one to take care of her during the race, and was perfectly willing to adopt her to keep her safe. According to him, she’s extremely happy being an overgrown cattle dog, although she seems to miss Julian sometimes. She’d seemed to adore him as much as he adored her.

“Aw, you miss her. You miss your big bird-lizard.” Rasher grins.

Julian gives him a mock scornful look. “ _She_ didn’t sass me endlessly, unlike _someone_ I could mention.” He puts his back to Rasher as if affronted, and Rasher embraces him from behind again and kisses his shoulder. He knows Julian was playing, but he also knows Julian really does miss Suzie. He hopes for both her and Julian’s sakes that she’s truly happy on the ranch. Maybe they can visit her after the race is over. He kisses Julian’s neck.

“I should get back, make sure my minions aren’t having problems. Anything else you need me for right now? Last-minute orders, more fashion advice, a quickie?” Rasher gives Julian’s hips a gentle squeeze. 

“No, you’re dismissed.” Julian reaches up and pats Rasher’s cheek. 

Rasher steps back and gives him a sardonic bow. “I live to serve.” He swats Julian’s ass. 

Julian turns and gives him a look. “Brat. Fuck off,” he says. There’s a clear fondness in his voice. Rasher grins and fucks off.

—

Ives watches as the mechanics strip the engine and gas tank from the Alfa Romeo with something like grief; the Alfa’s engine had been so good. Still, the replacement engine is impressive in its own way—it splits in half to reveal a thresher within, though it gives no indication of how it actually works. He still doesn’t believe the cars really run on blood, since that doesn’t even sound physically possible, but if the gimmick of the race is false, they sure are going to a great deal of trouble to make it look real. Ives appreciates the effort, but he can tell that Boyd isn’t sure if he likes it. Ives can understand why; there’s too much going on for it to be entirely show. Why go to this much trouble for pure effect? 

The cameras now installed at the upper corners of the windshield are a less welcome addition to the car. He knows the race is televised, and that they had to collect footage somehow, but they’re an intrusion nonetheless. He wonders if he can sabotage them somehow, or if they have any blind spots.

Movement catches his eye, and he notices Boyd shifting uncomfortably. He’s keeping his hand close to the hunting knife on his belt. Ives knows Boyd well enough now to know what’s making him anxious; Boyd has never been interested in advertising himself. He’s never wanted to be a lion or a wolf, never wanted to make clear his predatory nature. Now he’s being asked to display a part of himself he’s always preferred to keep hidden, and his every instinct must surely go against it.

“Easy, Boyd,” Ives murmurs. He strokes Boyd’s back, one long sweep from his shoulders to the small of his back, stopping just above the curve of his ass. Boyd very visibly relaxes and shifts closer to Ives. He’s so easy to read. To him, Ives is a monster, but he’s a familiar one; Boyd knows him, trusts him. Ives knows and trusts Boyd just as much, he allows. After so many years, they know each other as well as they know themselves, if not better. Boyd kisses the side of Ives’ head. 

The mechanic in charge of their car confers briefly with the other two, then nods. They bring the hood down in a decisive movement. They turn to Ives and Boyd, wiping their hands on a rag pulled from their back pocket. 

“All done,” they say. “Head through those doors. There’s a roadie out there who’ll tell you where to go next.” They brush stray strands of curly hair out of their eyes and signal to the next car in line.

Boyd and Ives get back into their car, Ives driving again. He’s not overly interested in cars as machines, but he loves the act of driving and fancies he’s gotten very good at it. Even when cars were new, little better than self-propelled wagons and not much faster, Ives loved driving. He’s always been enamored with the potential inherent in a car. For a man who grew up with horses and carriages and his own two feet as the only means of transportation, cars are almost miraculous. Ives does not envy his younger self the excruciating journeys across the sprawling nation. (Not to mention how much easier it is to dispose of a body when you could drive to the next state with it.) And he loves the Alfa Romeo, luxurious and powerful, easily his favorite out of the many cars they’ve owned through the years. The new engine sounds different, though Ives is at a loss to articulate this difference. They pull out of the garage into blinding sunlight, stop at a gesture from a short, long-haired man talking into a radio. He returns the radio to his belt as he approaches, eyes shaded beneath his black Stetson, and Ives puts the window down.

“Go straight ’til you see the Suck Bus, then pick a spot to park,” the man says. “Make sure to pop the hood, but keep it closed if you want. Sit tight and wait for the party. Good luck.”

Ives tips him a wry two-fingered salute, rolls the window back up, and drives on. Once the roadie is in the rearview and facing away from them, Boyd looks at Ives.

“That man who scanned us in…” he says, slowly, as if collecting his thoughts for a question.

“Mm. That was Rasher. He’s the manager, Julian Slink’s right hand man. Hideous tattoos.”

Boyd gives Ives a look. “The tattoos are the least of my concern.” 

“Yes, well. There’s definitely something not right about him, though I couldn’t say what it is. There’s all manner of speculation about it.” Ives had done some research on the Blood Drive, as much as he could, before they left. He’d had to wander down more dark alleys of the internet than even he was comfortable with, but the information was there for anyone who really cared to look. Ives neglects to mention the nature of the speculation surrounding Rasher; Boyd’s skittish enough right now. No need to say that the speculation is whether or not he’s wholly human, whether or not he turned into a monster and ate the entire race in the third season. Ives thinks it’s garbage, utterly impossible. The Blood Drive is an exercise in over-the-top storytelling applied to the excesses of reality TV. People don’t grow extra limbs, or have mouths on their bellies. Asking an audience to buy what happened was asking for too much suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless… “Did you see his eyes?”

Boyd swallows audibly. “Yeah.” Rasher’s eyes, deep in tattooed sockets, had been the brown of old blood, pupils blown unnaturally wide. Some drugs will cause dilated pupils, some amphetamines, but Rasher didn’t have the twitchiness of a junkie. He’d been all spidery grace and languid insolence, sliding along like an eel. There’s a contradiction in him somewhere, their instincts as hunters scream at them about it, but neither of them had had enough time to find it. Certainly on physicality alone Rasher came off as prey, spindly as he was, but they know better than to trust appearances. Rasher isn’t prey.

They don’t speak again. Before long, they’ve found the Suck Bus. It’s impossible to miss with its neon sign, even unlit, and Ives parks as far away from it and the other racers as possible. It puts them close to the stage, which might prove a curse if the size of the speakers is any indication. Ives doesn’t fancy losing his hearing. He immediately slings himself onto the hood and stretches his legs out, leaning back on his elbows. He’s showing off, letting the other racers get a look at the way he moves, the control he has over himself. He’s had nearly two centuries to learn himself and he knows how to broadcast it as a warning and a threat. His clothing, too, is designed to emphasize his wiry strength, inspired by the military uniforms of his human youth. Boyd, as is his wont, has gone in the opposite direction, t-shirt and jeans to seem unassuming, not a threat, almost trustworthy. He goes to great lengths to look as safe as he can. Together they look like a peacock and a sparrow. Boyd also looks like he wants to pace like a caged lion, so Ives sits up. He scoots so his legs hang off the end of the hood, keeps his knees widespread.

“Come here, Boyd,” he says, patting the hood between his thighs. 

Boyd eyes him for a moment, but then does as he’s told, sitting between Ives’ legs. There’s a little squeak from his knife’s leather sheath as it drags against the metal of the hood. Ives immediately wraps his arms around his waist and kisses his shoulder.

“Calm down,” he says. “Relax. Nothing’s even happened yet.” Boyd makes a noncommittal sound. Ives presses against his back and murmurs into his ear, “Look, don’t worry so much. Anyone gives us trouble, we’ll eat them. We’re the biggest monsters around.”

Boyd puts his hands over Ives’ wrists. “Ives, one of us has to have some caution, since apparently you aren’t familiar with the notion. Just let me be anxious, it might save our skins in the future.”

“All right, all right.” Ives kisses the side of his head. As he does, his gaze lands on a big man across the way standing next to a gleamingly new red Mustang. The front license plate is a Confederate flag. He’s paused in wiping down the hood and is staring at Ives and Boyd with an expression of profound disgust. Ives lowers his mouth to Boyd’s ear again. “Don’t look now, but I think I’ve found tomorrow’s dinner. Big man in a Mustang.”

“Saw him already. He’s why I’m anxious.”

Ives chuckles a little and frees one hand from Boyd’s grasp. He puts it over Boyd’s chest like he’s copping a feel (which in all honesty he is, because Boyd has a fantastic chest) and kisses Boyd’s neck. Not for the first time, he’s grateful that Boyd likes T-shirts. He feels Boyd relax a little, and sees the man with the Mustang go red.

“Ives,” Boyd says, sounding weary and fond, “please don’t antagonize the other racers before the race even starts.”

“Who says I’m antagonizing anyone?” Ives says, feigning innocence as he noses along Boyd’s jaw. “Maybe I just want to show my man some affection.” He kisses Boyd’s cheek.

“I can feel the death-glare from General Lee over there, I know you’re needling him.”

Ives snorts, but he leaves off kissing Boyd’s neck and returns his arm to his waist. It doesn’t stop the wannabe rebel glaring at them, but it does get Boyd to relax a little. Ives nuzzles his neck and puts his chin on his shoulder as he looks around. None of the other racers catch his eye, except for one: she’s extraordinarily normal-looking, a woman as nondescript as her green Corolla in her plain white button-down and blue jeans. She has her dark blonde hair in a neat ponytail, not a bit of jewelry beyond small silver rings in her ears (one each) and minimal makeup. She leans calmly against her car, hands loosely clasped in front of her, as she looks around with mild interest. She catches Ives’ gaze and nods amiably. He nods back, a little bemused; she looks as out of place as a beagle among wolves. He’s inclined to write her off as gone before the end of the race, and for that reason he suspects she’ll be one to watch. He’s all too familiar with the way Boyd hides behind a veneer of ordinariness. 

He looks over to the race board, where the names of all the racers and pictures of their cars are added as they arrive. The confederate, he sees, is just called Jonesy. The woman in the Corolla is… Ives bursts out laughing.

“Boyd,” he says, “you see the woman in the Corolla?”

“Yeah, what about her?”

“Look at her name on the board.”

Boyd looks over, scans the board, and then groans. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Annabel Slauson?”

“Wonder if she’s a descendent.”

“God, I don’t want to know. She doesn’t look like him. Also I really don’t want to contemplate General Slauson actually breeding.”

Ives laughs and hugs him.

The afternoon shades on into evening. More racers arrive, none of whom stand out at all. Ives dismisses them all as unthreatening, even the ones who fancy themselves dangerous. They’re all ordinary humans, whether they’re killers or not—no garden-variety sociopath can possibly be much of a threat to Boyd and Ives. Ives catches a few of them eyeing him with caution and mistrust, perhaps in reaction to his deliberate air of nonchalance in the face of a gathering of killers, and he preens under their regard. He keeps an arm around Boyd’s waist or shoulders, whichever is in reach, clearly claiming him and hopefully putting some sort of protection on him—if they’re afraid of Ives already, surely they won’t bother his man. Ives fully believes Boyd can take care of himself, but still. He’s a territorial bastard and is self-aware enough to know it.

By nightfall, the lights come on and the music starts, loud rock and heavy metal that set Ives’ teeth on edge. The audience is arriving now, a raucous crowd in punk and goth finery, milling around the racers and gravitating towards their early favorites. Ives knows part of the pre-race hype is announcements of and interviews with some or all of the racers, giving fans time to pick their favorites before the race even starts. The flashier racers already have sizable followings, and many of them are basking in the attention of their early-bird fans. Boyd and Ives were among the few who declined to be interviewed (along with Jonesy and Annabel Slauson), so their fans are few and give them something of a wide berth. Their only draw is their car, the only luxury model in the entire race—they’re otherwise complete unknowns.

Ives knows Boyd is watching the crowd, so he briefly shifts his attention away to the bouncers and the roadies. The former are, to a one, walking walls of muscle, stalking around the edges of the party and watching for troublemakers with eagle eyes. They tend to linger slightly around Jonesy as if expecting him to start a fight. It’s not an unreasonable expectation from the way he keeps glaring at everyone like they offend him simply by existing. The roadies are a mixed bag, some idling near the stage and others running around like ants who’ve just seen their hill drowned. The idlers are almost uniformly the mechanics, their tasks evidently done for the time being. He catches sight of Rasher at one point, a brief glimpse as he goes behind the curtains of the stage. He doesn’t emerge for quite some time, and disappears almost immediately once he does. He’s very good at vanishing into a crowd, for all that he’s fairly tall and more than distinctive with his tattooed face. Ives will keep that in mind.

He’s getting bored with people-watching, though. He’s somewhat enjoying the cautious regard from the handful of fans clustered around them, but none of them are getting near enough to interact with, and they largely seem more interested in the car. He’s no longer sitting on the hood, which he eventually remembered to pop as per the roadie’s instructions, but leaning against the side next to Boyd. Two women, he sees, are admiring Boyd, giving him very obvious once-overs and grinning a little. The way Boyd’s t-shirt clings slightly to his chest is drawing most of their attention. Ives doesn’t blame them, but he isn’t going to tolerate them, either.

Ives links his and Boyd’s hands together. “You’re being watched.”

Boyd stiffens, on high alert as he quickly scans the crowd. Ives snorts.

“Not like that,” he says. “Two women. Come here.” He gets a hand around the back of Boyd’s neck and pulls him down for a brief, thorough kiss. “Can’t have them thinking you’re fair game,” he says as he pulls away. He kisses him again, and this time Boyd pulls his hand from Ives’ and puts his arm around his waist. 

“Making sure I know my place?” Boyd asks, voice wry. He kisses Ives again.

“Making sure they know your place.” Ives glances back around at the two who’d been looking at Boyd. They both look disappointed, then catch him staring at them and go pale. Ives gives them a very catty grin and waves. They scurry off. Pleased, Ives leans against Boyd. “Wish they’d get this show on the road already, no pun intended.”

Boyd opens his mouth to reply, but the music cuts out mid-song (“You better run like the devil ‘cause they’re never gonna—“) and stops him. For a second, Ives’ ears ring in the sudden absence of sound, and then the crowd starts cheering. Incredibly, La Marseillaise plays from the speakers, an overblown version sung by a female opera singer taking herself extremely seriously. Ives is either going to enjoy what comes next or hate it. Boyd goes tense again. The curtains at the back of the stage part, and a man in a red tailcoat and a massive feathered collar seems to glide out, his back to the crowd. The screaming and cheering reaches a fever pitch as the man rotates, giving Ives his first look at Julian Slink. He is extremely unimpressed.

“How tacky,” he half-snarls under his breath, seeing Slink’s pseudo-Victorian finery and deliberately overdone makeup. He’s a trashy travesty of nineteenth century style, offensively so to a man who’d lived it and worn it far better. Epaulets on a tailcoat, really? Really?

“Easy, Beau Brummel,” Boyd murmurs, patting Ives’ shoulder and grinning. “More than one way to be a dandy.”

Slink stares out at the crowd, his eyes hidden behind large round sunglasses, and then steps up to the microphone. He taps it almost daintily with a finger that looks to have been dipped to the knuckle in black paint, causing a pop in the speakers, and lets his lips peel back in a wide grin. Ives’ own lip curls in deep disdain. And then Slink starts speaking:

“From the heights of heaven, from the depths of hell, from the shadows of the world, from the lonely places high and low, welcome! You malevolent creatures, you fallen souls, you dark spirits, you craven monsters, you vicious things! Welcome! Killers and victims and everyone in between, welcome! I am your host, Julian Slink—master of ceremonies, master of mayhem, god of the stage, and I welcome you all!” 

The crowd cheers. Ives hates him.

“It sure has been a long time, hasn’t it?” Slink continues, in tones of mock anguish. “A whole year! A whole long, dark year devoid of thrills, devoid of passion, devoid of life. I know, I know, I’ve missed all of you, and I’m sure you all missed the chaos, the carnage, the mayhem that is the…” He pauses, then grins maniacally and shouts, “Blood Drive!” 

At Slink’s shout, roadies step forward. As one, they open the hoods of all the cars, and the engines come alive, the threshers within roaring to life. Some of them, Ives sees, already have blood and gore coating the insides of the engine bays, and he suspects they’re plants to make the whole gimmick look good. The roadie who’d opened the Alfa glances at Boyd and Ives.

“Y’all might wanna get out of the splash zone,” she says. Before Ives can ask what she meant, she’s stepping away, and a shadow passes overhead.

Ives looks up to see a crane carrying a struggling, flailing man, hanging from chains around his wrists, and swinging around over the Alfa. The roadie is directing it, lining the man up with the engine. The man’s screams are inaudible—he’s gagged. At first Ives thinks he’s an animatronic, or some kind of puppet, but then he meets the man’s eyes, sees the fear and terror in them. On impulse, Ives steps well away, and after a moment Boyd follows. Boyd’s eyes are fixed on the man hanging from the crane. 

“Ives…” he says slowly.

The crane comes down. The roadie guides the man on the end of it to the engine.

It’s not a gimmick. The footage Ives had found wasn’t faked. The thresher wasn’t just an aesthetic quirk.

It’s an incredible mess. All Ives can think about is the time he’d seen a neighbor throw a watermelon into a wood-chipper for fun after taking out a tree. It’s not much different, Ives thinks, feeling dazed as he watches the man getting chewed up by the engine, still screaming through the gag. Blood sprays out of the engine in a huge radius, coating the roadie in so much gore she looks like she just walked through an abattoir. The smell is horrendous, worse than the cave had been somehow, all blood and ruptured intestines and hot metal. The engines are roaring and growling like living things as they grind the bodies, like wolves snarling over the carcass of an elk. Ives’ jaw is hanging open. 

The cars eat people. They really, genuinely eat people. 

The crowd is lapping it up, to a one unperturbed by the spectacle of living humans being devoured by engines, worked to a frenzy by the sight. Ives stares around at them. He knows the world is callous and cynical these days, destroyed by the catastrophe of the Scar and the collapse of law and order, hope a foreign concept, but for so many to be so thrilled by the sight of such bloody, gruesome murder… when had it gotten this far? When did the world become so bloodthirsty? He’s shocked by the sight, and he kills and eats people to survive. Then again, his shock isn’t morally motivated; he doesn’t care about the humans dying in the engines. He’s just surprised, really.

A hand comes down on his shoulder. He turns to see Boyd looking almost sick, pale and clammy, as he watches the crane lift back up. The man hanging from it has been reduced to shoulders and a head, the ragged ends of his esophagus and spinal cord swinging freely.

“Ives, what the fuck have we gotten ourselves into?” Boyd croaks, barely audible over the screaming crowd.

Ives doesn’t reply. He can’t; he’s still too shocked.

Meanwhile, Slink has started back up. “Now as much as I love a little anarchy, I just want to introduce a little rule this year, since we’ve had some problems in this regard: No killing other racers! We can’t have a good show when half of you are dead by the others’ hands before the third race! Anyone caught killing other racers is going to be… disqualified, in the strongest possible terms!” The way he says it makes it clear that it’s a euphemism, and Ives suspects he means killed.

Still, he did say “caught;” Ives and Boyd haven’t lived this long without knowing how to kill without arousing suspicion.

“Don’t worry, all of you bloodthirsty little savages will have all the gore and carnage your hearts desire, since that’s the only killing ban!” Slink continues. “I don’t doubt the racers will find plenty of ways to serve plenty of blood! Now then…”

The roadies start closing hoods, one by one, in a barrage of slams that almost seems rehearsed.

“Let’s get this moveable feast under way, shall we?” Slink says. “Your cars all have GPS systems with the finish line coordinates and multiple routes pre-programmed in, but how you get there is entirely up to you. Take whatever route you want to get where you’re going, and give us a good show along the way! Got it?”

There’s a chorus of cheers from the crowd, from racers and fans alike. Clearly most of the racers had some idea of what to expect going in; no one else seems shell-shocked. Slink looks around at them all, smiling half beatifically and half maliciously.

“Racers to your cars!” he bellows abruptly. There’s a mad scramble as the racers dive into their cars and start their engines, and the fans and roadies scramble away from the cars. “Good luck, don’t fuck it up! We’ll see you all at the finish line!” Rasher steps onto stage left and raises a starting pistol. He pulls the trigger, and the bang is nearly drowned out by the sound of revving engines, squealing tires, and more cacophonous cheering.

The race is on.


	3. hail columbia!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> boyd and ives have many fans, but a man in a mustang is not likely to be one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jonesy and what happens to him in this and the next chapter is a direct reaction to my blistering fucking rage at the second 'it' movie, no i will not elaborate, do not fucking @ me abt it unless u want to hear me rant for like twenty minutes straight. 
> 
> content warnings: homophobic slurs, gay-bashing, violence

The racers wheel and dodge around each other like bumper cars as they jockey for position amongst the rusting, crumbling remains of the warehouse. The place is more than big enough for them all, but there’s a certain amount of scrambling to be first out of the building. Ives, driving again, pulls himself together when Jonesy’s red Mustang screams past, nearly scraping the side of the Alfa. He can let himself be shocked later, when he’s not in the middle of a pack of cars in a damn warehouse. He sees Jonesy clearly miss a gear and laughs, laughs harder when Jonesy chirps the tires trying to accelerate towards one of the doors. Nevertheless, Jonesy makes it out of the warehouse first, with Annabel Slauson close behind him. 

Before long Boyd and Ives too are out of the warehouse, heading for the open road and the California desert. It’s wide open here, and Ives easily gets out ahead of the pack. He can see Slauson and Jonesy out ahead, and they wind up taking the same route. Ives looks at the GPS and sees three highlighted; the one Jonesy and Slauson took looks like it’s the shortest. He shrugs and takes it as well. They speed past more abandoned warehouses, and then they’re out into the desert. Boyd then seems to come out of the stupor the start of the race had left him in.

“Did all of that…” He stops, stares out the window at the passing scenery, starts again. “Was that a dream? Does this car really run on blood now?”

Ives just nods. He still feels vaguely shell-shocked. He almost understands the way Boyd had been at Fort Spencer now, though without the moral outrage. He still can’t quite believe what he’d seen, but the evidence is mere feet away. He can still smell the blood. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Boyd open his mouth, close it, open it again, then close it again and shake his head.

“We just have to finish, remember?” Ives says. “I know what your tortured little heart is telling you right now, but you’re going to have to ignore it for the time being.”

Boyd lets his head thump back against the headrest. He stares out the window again. Here and there lights strobe across the dark desert, likely racers with cars capable of off-roading seeking short-cuts across the wilderness. It’s likely not a bad strategy, but Ives is keeping to the road. The Alfa isn’t an off-road vehicle. Besides, if the car’s going to need refueling, they’re more likely to find targets by the road than out in the desert. It’ll feel odd, killing someone to feed a car instead of themselves.

“If I had known…” Boyd begins.

“You made it clear to me that we had no choice. Besides, we really don’t have moral ground to stand on.”

“We don’t kill for fun!”

“We still kill. We don’t have to; we could choose to live as normal people, denying ourselves and what we are, never kill another person. But we’ve never made that choice. You chose this a long time ago, just as I did.” Ives looks at Boyd. “Angst about it later, my dear, we have a race to finish.”

“Fuck.” Boyd rubs a hand over his mouth, and doesn’t speak again.

They drive through the night and most of the day without encountering the other racers; according to one of the gauges newly installed in the dash, they’re staying steady in third, the others well behind them. Boyd drives from midnight until dawn. At one point, they come across a seemingly stalled panel van on the side of the road, the two owners of which try to mug Boyd and Ives when they stop to investigate. One winds up in the Alfa’s engine and select parts of the other in their cooler. (The van’s contents also wind up in the engine. The racers in the Blood Drive aren’t the only killers on the road, it seems.) Sometime in the afternoon, they pass Slauson, leaning against the driver’s side door of her Corolla as the engine grinds up a body. She waves cheerfully to them as they pass. Ives briefly wonders how she manhandled the body into the engine; she doesn’t look that strong.

The sun is hanging low near the horizon and Ives is driving again by the time they catch up to a familiar Mustang, barreling along the center line, taking up as much of the road as possible. Ives’ lip curls.

“Look who it is,” he murmurs. Boyd sits up a little. He’s spent the last few hours completely checked out, but he’s clearly alert now. 

“Can we get past him?” he asks. “I don’t think I could handle losing to him of all people.”

Ives grins. “Oh, I think we stand a decent chance,” he says rather airily.

“Good.”

Ives pushes the gas, closing in on Jackass until he’s tailgating him hard. Jonesy’s head turns in a clear double-take, and after a moment his arm emerges from the window. His middle finger is upraised.

“Rude of him,” Ives remarks. He lays on the horn. 

The Mustang swerves a little. Then he starts swerving in earnest, slaloming across the road in an attempt to keep Ives from passing him. Annoyingly, it’ll work, Ives knows, since he can’t push the Alfa hard enough to squeeze past him without getting clipped, and Jackass is swerving unevenly besides; he can’t control the car enough to manage a cleaner swerve. Ives hopes he loses control entirely. If he keeps swinging it back and forth like that, he’s going to end up swinging one end out too far and spinning out. 

Still, Ives doesn’t want to wait that long. He wonders if he can swing onto the shoulder; the Alfa won’t like it and there’s a chance he’ll be the one spinning out, but it’ll be better than coming in second while glaring at Jackass’ crossed guns and “How’s my driving? Dial 1-800 EAT SHIT” stickers in the rear window and his “SMOKEY” license plate. He starts to head to the left side as Jackass goes right. Up ahead, barely visible through the heat shimmer on the horizon, Ives thinks he can see the finish line. 

“Is that the finish?” he asks.

Boyd goes into the glove box and pulls out a pair of slim binoculars. After a moment, he nods.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it quick,” he says. “We’re running out of road.”

Ives guns the engine—just as Jackass swerves back in front of him. He swears and taps the brakes, then swings for the other side. Once again Jackass blocks him, and this time Ives sees a dust cloud puff up where Jackass clips the shoulder.

“All right, you fucker,” he mutters under his breath.

Ives swings hard to the left, and this time gets lucky. Jackass follows, but he can’t correct properly—his front tires hit the loose gravel shoulder and spin, and his back end swings wide, spinning him around the wrong way. He slides into the ditch as Ives blows past, shoves his head and shoulder out of the window to yell at Ives. Ives tells Boyd to take the wheel as he puts his own window down, then leans out. He blows a kiss at Jackass and waves before ducking back in.

“Well done,” Boyd says, somewhat wryly.

“Wasn’t even hard,” Ives says, preening. “He’s got more car than he can handle, the useless idiot.”

Still, Jonesy manages to get it out of the ditch fairly quickly; it isn’t long before Ives sees him approaching in the rearview. If they weren’t so close to the finish line, Ives would be worried; Jackass is driving aggressively enough that with enough distance, he might actually be able to pass them. He’s swinging back and forth across the road again, and Ives mimics him, keeping him from passing them. Ives almost expects him to ram them, but perhaps Jonesy doesn’t think he could keep his car on the road if he tried. The finish line is drawing closer and closer, the two towers of body parts becoming clearer and clearer. Ives is flogging the Alfa hard now, Jackass is almost right on his bumper—

—And then Jonesy again finds himself spinning off into a ditch, and Ives blasts across the finish line.

The gathered crowd surges forward to surround them as soon as they stop, screaming and cheering, pounding the roof, stepping aside barely enough to let Ives and Boyd open the doors. Ives finds himself grinning hugely; he missed having an audience, having a crowd around him, feeling the adoration and adulation of complete strangers for an accomplishment of no more or less than a job well done. 

“Congratulations to Seward and Renfield, our first winners!” Slink shouts from the stage. “Well done, gentlemen, well done! And a very good try from Jonesy in second, close but no cigar!”

Ives and Boyd get out of the car as Jackass, his Mustang now covered in dust, screeches to a halt. He looks murderous as he gets out, his blocky face red in patches. 

“You fuckin’ fairies!” he snarls over the crowd. “What kinda fuckin’ bullshit drivin’—I oughtta fuckin’—“ He strides towards Boyd and Ives, murder in his eyes, and the crowd goes quiet. 

“Ought to what?” Ives says calmly. He hopes Jonesy tries something. “Hm?” He stands his ground. Boyd comes up behind him. “It was skilled driving, you incompetent moron. It’s not my fault you came with a car you can’t handle.”

“Fuck you!” Jonesy spits. He stops then, realizing suddenly that a number of roadies are approaching, mostly bouncers but a few of the mechanics as well, the latter armed with large wrenches. He gives them wary looks.

“Now, now, no sore losers,” Slink says as he appears then, seemingly having materialized from the dust. Rasher’s at his back, and where Rasher came from Ives cannot fathom; he hasn’t seen him at all since they arrived. “You’ll have plenty of opportunities to try to win in the future. For now, go enjoy the party! Have a beer or three.”

Jonesy glares daggers at Slink, clearly about to start spitting slurs at him, but he shows a modicum of intelligence: he looks at the bouncers and armed mechanics coming towards him and visibly holds himself back. He spits into the dust at Slink’s boots, gives Boyd and Ives one last glare, then starts to stomp off towards the party. Slink grabs him by the arm.

“Word of warning, first,” he says, his voice dark and dangerous. “Call anyone a fairy where I can hear it again, and I’ll feed your arm to your own engine. Renfield and Seward aren’t the only queers around here, and the rest all have much more power over you than they do.” He gives Jonesy a dismissive little pat on the cheek, smiling broadly and humorlessly. “All right, pumpkin? Now fuck off before I turn you into a jack o’ lantern.”

He releases Jonesy. Jonesy stares at him, half-horrified and half-enraged, and for a moment Ives thinks he’s going to pick a fight anyway. But he looks at the bouncers again, and makes discretion the better part of valor. He doesn’t run away, but he doesn’t waste time leaving. Slink plants his hands on his cane and watches him go, an expression of deep disgust on his face, then turns to Boyd and Ives. His wide grin returns.

“I say again, congratulations!” he says, walking towards them. “A fine performance from the pair of you!” He waves towards the party. “Leave your car to our mechanics, who will give it a good once-over to make sure everything’s functioning, and go relax! Enjoy yourselves! The party runs until dawn, and there’s more than enough fun for everyone.” 

It seems like a signal, as the fans come forward and all but mob Ives and Boyd as Slink finishes speaking, but Ives doesn’t think it is. He doesn’t credit Slink with that much manipulative ability, for all that he knows how to work a crowd from the stage. And frankly, Ives doesn’t care; the day’s driving is over and his body is enervated with the thrill of the win. A party sounds like just the thing. He and Boyd allow the crowd to herd them into the party.

This time Ives finds himself enjoying all of it—the crowds, the music, the energy. He’s the center of attention, surrounded by adoring fans who would do anything just to get him to look favorably on them. He hasn’t had this in almost two centuries, and he’s missed it. Boyd, rather predictably, is deeply uncomfortable; he sticks to Ives like a burr, as though trying to hide in his shadow. Ives does his best to keep the fans’ attention off of Boyd, but there’s only so much he can do; more than a few still flock around him. It only takes a few hours for Boyd to get sick of it. He’s never been an outgoing man, Ives knows, and the drunken abandonment of this particular party is sure to grate on his nerves. It’s barely midnight when Boyd squeezes Ives’ shoulder and leans close to his ear. 

“I’m getting out of here,” he says. Ives glances up at him.

“I’ll be a few hours yet. Do wait up for me,” he says, before tugging him down for a kiss that makes his admirers wolf-whistle and groan in theatrical envy. Ives doesn’t bother to bite back a grin and licks his lips as Boyd leans back, and he can tell by the way Boyd’s lips twitch that he’s trying not to grin himself. Boyd pulls Ives into another kiss, then leaves without a word. Ives watches Boyd hungrily as he heads off. He’s going to absolutely wreck him tonight.

“God, you two are so fucking cute, I can’t even!” someone gushes, and Ives laughs and turns back to the crowd. 

He continues basking in the adoration. He’s always loved having an audience, loved performing—he’d been an actor before the tuberculosis ruined his stage presence. It was hard to project your voice when you could barely breathe, hard to play the roguish dandy when there’s blood all down your shirt from a hemorrhage. He still regards his performances at Fort Spencer as some of his finest, particularly when he’d convinced jolly old Hart to follow him into the wilderness. To be sure, the fort hadn’t had the finest men, intellectually speaking, but Hart had been clever enough, and Ives had pulled the wool over his eyes right from the start. And performing for the drunkard Knox and the perpetually high Cleaves had been so, so easy, both of them blinded by their addictions and suspicious of Boyd for returning alone, and Ives has never despised a task for being easy. Martha might have been a problem, but she’d been too wrapped in her grief for her brother, and then she’d been sent away. Candy from a baby. 

This place, this time, makes Fort Spencer look like a challenge. He doesn’t have to try at all. So many of the faces now before him are familiar in their fogs; cheeks flushed with alcohol, eyes glazed with Red or marijuana, maniacally gleeful from party drugs like Ecstasy. Cleaves and Knox would’ve fit right in. Better still, no one in this happy, addled crowd has to be convinced of his innocence: they want him to be a killer. His success in this race is measured by his body count, by the number of humans devoured by his car. He suspects he could reveal his and Boyd’s true nature to these adoring fools and they’d only love the two of them more.

How ridiculous the world has become.

But not long after Boyd leaves, mere minutes in fact, a commotion near the tent entrance catches Ives’ eye. Three of the bouncers have just elbowed through the crowd to leave. Ives can’t see the direction they take, too short to see over the crowd, and curiosity gets the better of him. Besides, he wants adoration of a different kind now, a more personal and private kind that grows between two people who have known each other intimately for a very long time. He doesn’t want the empty adoration of the crowd, he wants the adoration of a comfortable long-time lover whose body he knows as well as his own and vice versa. He wants Boyd. He extracts himself from the needy throng, all of whom coo and protest.

“Sorry, dears, mustn’t keep my man waiting,” he tells them, winking. “Don’t worry, you know I’ll be back after the next race. Good night, everyone.”

As he weaves through the crowd towards the entrance, it occurs to him that he hasn’t seen General Lee all evening. Ives had expected to have to tolerate some sort of confrontation from the tiresome little bigot, he’d been so livid that he’d lost to Boyd and Ives, but he’d kept away. Had he just not wanted to attack them in front of witnesses? It wouldn’t be surprising, he realizes with a sinking feeling. The man’s a coward, there’s no way he’d attack either of them in front of a crowd. Ives suddenly worries for Boyd. He sees another bouncer head out just ahead of him and he calls out to the man:

“What’s going on?”

The bouncer glances at him. “Dunno, supposedly Jonesy’s attacked someone by the fuel truck.”

Ives’s heart drops. “Boyd,” he breathes, and sprints towards the fuel truck.

He hears the fight before he sees it, a cacophony of shouts he’s unable to pick words out of. Then he gets close enough to hear Jonesy screaming invectives and slurs, pained yells from a variety of throats, and, under it all, a sharp groan all too familiar to Ives from that last fight at the fort. He quickens his pace and pushes through a gathered crowd of groupies and roadies. 

Boyd is on the ground, curled around himself like a bug, shirt torn to reveal bruises blooming across his body. Ives cries out and drops to him, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. Blood boiling, he glares up at Jonesy, who’s sporting a split lip and a black eye. He must’ve ambushed Boyd, there’s no other way he’d have managed to do so much damage to Boyd while taking so little himself. Four bouncers are struggling to hold Jonesy back as the man flails against them. They all seem to have felt Jonesy’s wrath somehow; one already has a shiner blooming over her left eye, one has a bloodied lip. He catches one in the nose and the man lets go briefly to clutch at his face.

“Fuckin’ fag-lovers, let me go!” Jonesy screams, freeing his other arm and kicking one of the roadies in the balls. He goes down with his hands between his legs, and two bouncers aren’t nearly enough. Jonesy breaks free and runs towards Boyd with murder in his eyes. “Teach you fairy cocksuckers to beat me—I’ll fuckin’ kill you freaks—!“

Ives doesn’t think. He barrels into Jonesy like a cannonball and bulls him straight onto his back before delivering a head-butt his long-dead Glaswegian father and brothers would be proud of. Jonesy’s nose shatters under the impact, spewing blood like a fountain. Blood flies in strings and spatters as Ives punches Jonesy, again and again, teeth bared like an animal’s, heedless of the yells of the onlookers. His world has narrowed in his rage to the hateful man under him and the singular desire to see that man reduced to a bloody smear on the ground. Ives’ knuckles are splitting against Jonesy’s teeth and he doesn’t feel it, barely registers the blood on his hands. He doesn’t care. He hears and ignores the shouts from the crowd, from the bouncers and the groupies and the other racers. Some of the shouts are cheers. Jonesy’s raining blows on him, but he’s still half-stunned from Ives’ head-butt; his blows are weak.

Ives gets his hands around Jonesy’s thick neck and leans hard, his furious expression taking an edge of joy when Jonesy sputters and chokes. Jonesy’s slapping his forearms trying to dislodge him, but Ives will not be deterred. He’s going to kill him, he’s going to end this waste of a life, this disgusting man, for the cardinal sin of daring to hurt Boyd. Jonesy’s going purple—

Hands close around Ives’ arms and haul him backwards, and he fights against them, intent only on getting back and finishing the job. Someone’s yelling in his ear, someone else is yelling for Rasher and Slink, but Ives just yanks hard, desperate to get back to punishing Jonesy. He nearly slips free before the bouncers tighten their grips.

“Bastard!” he spits as four other bouncers haul Jonesy to his feet. “You motherfucking son of a whore!” He can’t get loose, the bouncers holding him back are too big for even Ives’ strength to move.

“Fuck you, faggot!” Jonesy snarls, the hatred clear even though the words are not thanks to his broken nose, spitting a tooth and a gob of blood to the ground before he tries to launch himself at Ives again. He’s a mess, his face is swollen and bruised and covered in blood, his nose an indistinct lump in the middle of his face, and it’s not enough, it could never be enough. “Enough” would only be dead. Bouncers catch Jonesy and hold him again, but barely, and Ives hopes they lose their grip. “I’ll kill you, I’ll fuckin’ kill you—“

“You fucking shit-stain coward,” Ives snarls, “at least I had the balls to attack you in front of an audience, you came after Robert in the shadows—“

“Cut it the fuck out!”

Everyone turns to see Slink striding through the crowd, Rasher at his heels. Slink looks furious. 

“When I said ‘Don’t kill the other racers’, I meant it!” he snaps. “I don’t care if you’re on the road or at the party, other racers are off-fucking-limits!” He glares at Jonesy. “That applies to you, too, you tedious little shit. Now fuck off.” He looks at the bouncers holding him back. “Make sure he stays fucked off. If he gives you trouble, kill him.”

The bouncers nod and haul Jonesy off, Jonesy protesting all the way. Slink and Rasher both eye Boyd and Ives as if expecting one or the other to go after Jonesy. But Boyd is still curled on the ground and Ives has already refocused on Boyd, forgetting Jonesy for the moment. With the object of his rage gone, Ives only has concern for Boyd. Rasher jerks his head at the bouncers, who release Ives. He goes straight to Boyd, laying a hand on his shoulder again as he uncurls. To the onlookers, it’s like a switch has been flipped—he’s all solicitous concern now, no sign of his earlier rage except for the injuries to his hands and the blooming bruise on his forehead from Jonesy’s skull. His bloodied hands touch Boyd with the same care he might use to hold an eggshell, soft and gentle, as he lays a hand under his jaw to tilt his face up. The careful way he handles Boyd would almost make them doubt the violence he’d unleashed on Jonesy, had they not seen it firsthand.

“Are you all right?” Ives murmurs. Boyd’s still holding his arm over his belly, still slumped forward. His lip is swollen and split, his nose bleeding sluggishly, the neck of his shirt torn halfway down his chest.

Boyd leans forward and puts his head against Ives’ shoulder. “I’ll be fine,” he says. His voice is hoarse and thick, likely from his bloodied nose. Blood drips from the split in his lip, glistening in his goatee. His cheek is cut and bruised, and Ives thinks he sees the imprint of one of Jonesy’s heavy rings. Rage flares anew in his gut. 

“You two,” Slink says then. Ives reluctantly looks up at him. “The killing ban goes for you, as well. Leave Jonesy to me.”

Ives glares at him. He wants to argue, but Boyd gets his arm around Ives’ waist and holds him back. Ives settles for a sneer and puts his arms around Boyd’s shoulders. He turns his head enough to watch Slink and Rasher walk away. Their departure seems to act as a cue; the rest of the crowd slowly disperses, leaving Boyd and Ives alone in the shadows. Ives tugs Boyd to lay against him, and Boyd goes without protest. They remain like this for a while. Boyd gradually uncurls fully, though his bruises aren’t fading. 

“Shall I kill him for you?” Ives asks quietly. “Tear his limbs off, feed you pieces of him while he watches?”

“Not yet,” Boyd replies.

“Why didn’t you gut him? Where’s your knife?”

“Left it in the car. Didn’t…” Boyd sighs. “Didn’t think I’d need it. More fool me, thinking people in a race like this would abide by anyone’s rules.”

Ives nods. He turns Boyd to face him and gently licks the blood from his lips. He feels more than hears Boyd sigh, the slight breath against his lips, and turns it into a kiss, mindful of Boyd’s nose. Ives tastes the blood on his lips and even as he curses Jonesy anew, he can’t help but relish the taste. It’s a taste he knows all too well, and while he’d never want to kill Boyd to taste it, he still savors it. He knows no one’s taste as well as he knows Boyd’s. They part, their foreheads touching, and sit in silence for a moment.

“It’s a good thing we heal so quickly,” Ives remarks after a moment. “Otherwise our adoring fans might be so outraged at that bastard hurting your pretty face that they kill him themselves and deprive us of the chance.” Boyd laughs, then winces and clutches his chest.

“I think he cracked a rib,” he grumbles. “Come on, help me up.”

Ives puts his arm around Boyd’s waist below his ribs, slings Boyd’s arm around his shoulders, and carefully levers him up. They make their way back to the car, Boyd eventually leaning on Ives more out of a simple desire for contact than a need; his bruises are finally beginning to fade. His gaze is slightly distant; he’s already planning Jonesy’s demise. Ives hopes whatever he comes up with will be slow and agonizing. When they reach their car, Boyd catches Ives’ eye.

“We need to get him off-camera,” he says.

Ives grins.


	4. murder! murder!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the righteous violence that is gays bashing back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> content warnings: homophobic slurs, violence, murder, cannibalism, car accidents, murder as an aphrodisiac, handies and blowjobs in the front seat of an expensive italian sportscar

Jonesy’s attack on Boyd does nothing to make him popular. If anything, it moves him even lower than he already was in the fandom’s regard; he, an openly bigoted and hateful person, attacked a handsome, well-spoken, successful man in what was by all appearances a loving relationship with another handsome, well-spoken, successful man, and he did it in the shadows. He didn’t even have the courage to attack him in front of a crowd, as Ives had so loudly and correctly pointed out. It doesn’t take long for word of the attack to reach Boyd and Ives’ fans, and they take it upon themselves to act as a kind of honor guard, standing around them like bodyguards the entire morning before the race, as Ives finds out just after sunrise when he leaves their tent to take a piss. Three of them insist on accompanying him to the row of port-a-johns by the fuel truck. It’s rather endearing, Ives remarks to Boyd on his return, like being defended by a litter of kittens. 

(The comparison is more apt than he realizes; some of the fans may seem small and non-threatening, but they’re the ones most dangerously armed. Not a one is without military-grade pepper spray or heavy pewter rings doubling as brass knuckles. Kittens may be small, but they’re more than willing to defend themselves, and they can do considerable damage even with their tiny claws.)

Boyd, for his part, is actually rather touched; it’s refreshing to see that two gay men are being so protected from the wrath of a bigot like Jonesy. It had been his unhappy experience that the attitude to gay-bashings in most parts of the country was “the victim deserved it,” and he’s pleased to see that that attitude is not shared by the Blood Drive or its fans. There are bouncers amongst the fans in their little entourage, and as much as Boyd knows they’re to keep him and Ives in line they also serve as a line of defense. The fact that Slink is so clearly queer himself is likely part of it. He wouldn’t make the mistake of hiring anyone homophobic to work under him. Nevertheless, the fact that everyone seems to share his stance is refreshing. 

Not that they need protecting in a general sense, nor will they in a specific sense soon.

Just before the next race, Ives slips past their little honor guard and the roadies and makes his way over to Jonesy’s car. He’s making some adjustment under the hood, though Ives can’t fathom what it is, given that the engines are completely beyond the expertise of anyone outside the race. Ives stops well outside of Jonesy’s reach and stands for a minute. Jonesy has no idea he’s there; Ives is cat-quiet whether he wants to be or not.

“Oi,” Ives calls. “Shitstain.”

Jonesy jumps badly, hitting his head on the hood with a loud clang and a swear. He whirls, clutching a spanner in his right hand. His face looks even worse than it did the day before; the bruising is well-established and his nose is still swollen. He looks less like a tenderized steak than he did the day before, but it’s no improvement. The expression of rage his face twists into makes the damage even uglier. Ives is deeply smug that his quick healing kept him from showing any damage from their fight—even his split knuckles have healed. Boyd’s injuries are mostly already healed as well.

“The fuck do you want, cocksucker?” Jonesy snarls. 

“Robert and I have a little proposition for you,” Ives says airily, leaning his weight on one hip and crossing his arms.

“Fuck you—“

“Oh, you wish. We want to challenge you to a little private tete-a-tete, just you against us. We looked at the map of the next leg, and there’s a split that would take us far enough away from the course that we could finish what we started last night without interruption, but not so far that we can’t make it back to the race in time.”

Jonesy snorts. “Why the fuck would I agree to that?”

Ives smiles, nasty and cruel. “Because if you don’t, it’ll just prove you’re nothing more than a jumped-up little schoolyard bully, too cowardly to face us in a fair fight.”

“Prove to who? No one’s gonna be watching—“

“To yourself, for a start. You’ll have to live for the rest of your life with the knowledge that I gave you the perfect chance to really teach Robert and me a lesson, and yet you turned me down.” Ives lifts an eyebrow. “If you really think you can take a couple of ‘fairy cocksuckers’ who had the audacity to beat you in a car race, what do you have to lose by accepting my challenge?” He lets his expression curl into a sneer as he spits each word like a nail, acid coating his tongue. “If you turn me down, that means you were too afraid of the possibility of losing to us. And you will never, ever forget it. It’ll poison you, until one day you’ll look in the mirror and see the coward we all know you are.

“And besides, do you really think I won’t spread it all around this entire outfit that we challenged you to a private fight and you were too scared to accept? We’ll make sure everyone knows you’re a chickenshit weakling scared of two gay men half your size.” Ives shrugs. “But it really is your decision in the end. Live with your cowardice, or accept our challenge. Your call. If you decide to accept, follow us at the first fork in the road. You’ll be behind us anyway, I’m sure, so that shouldn’t be hard.”

Ives turns on his heel and starts to stride away. Behind him, Jonesy swears and slams the hood of his car down.

“You’re gonna regret this, you little fairy,” Jonesy snarls. “You and your fuckin’ bitch-boy. I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you both and leave you for the buzzards.”

Ives looks over his shoulder at Jonesy. “We’ll see,” he says, smiling. He turns back around and keeps walking, waves with a dismissive little finger-wiggle, his other hand in the pocket of his jacket where it had been the entire conversation, clenched around the small knife he keeps up his sleeve.

He rejoins Boyd by their car, kisses him on the cheek.

“We’re on,” he murmurs. 

As soon as the signal flares green Ives floors it. They’ve got to get way out ahead of the pack as soon as possible, to give them enough headway to get Jonesy away from the main race. Once they get out onto open road, it’ll be easier; right now everyone’s jostling for position in the enclosed space of a dead industrial park. The roar of the engines echo off the concrete skeletons around them, some of the more daring drivers going in and out of the empty warehouses in an attempt to sneak ahead of the others. Ives flogs the Alfa hard and keeps the lead he established, even as a souped-up Honda flies out of the truck bay of a warehouse on his right. He passes by it, and suddenly they’re out of the park. Flat wasteland stretches to either side of them, brown dirt and scrubby patches of tall grass.

The pack spreads out, some going off-road. Ives can’t afford to look in the mirrors for Jonesy’s Mustang.

“Where’s our confederate friend?” he asks.

Boyd looks in the wing mirror and rearview, then twists around in his seat. “Middle of the pack,” he says. “He’s trying to get clear.” He turns back around. “The split’s about five miles from the industrial park.”

“I remember. Sing out when you see it.” Ives does remember it, but he’ll also trust Boyd’s navigation skills and sense of direction over his own. His aren’t bad, but Boyd’s are better.

Within minutes the split is in view, one side of the road curving gently off and the other veering away into a singularly desolate region marked by the remains of crumbling houses, the corpse of a dead town. It had likely once been home to the workers in the industrial park. Boyd points out the split, and Ives waits until the last possible second to take the split. Hopefully the other racers won’t follow them under the assumption that Ives and Boyd have found a short-cut or something. They need to get Jonesy alone.

Fortunately the only one to follow them is Jonesy. His Mustang takes the turn badly, fishtailing across the highway and sending up clouds of dust in his wake. Ives snorts. The man really has no control over his own car. They fly into the ruins of the town, blasting down what had once been the main street and is now little more than a dusty track between skeletal buildings. By the look of it the place had been abandoned even before the Scar—the buildings all bear the same pre-fab fifties look beneath decades of desert bleaching and drying. Dead palm trees stand here and there along the street like weird sentinels, and the wind of the cars’ passage tears their desiccated leaves from the trunks. 

Jonesy is keeping pace with them, shockingly, almost tailgating them. Boyd glances at the rearview mirror and then at Ives.

“Don’t worry about him,” Ives says. “The closer he follows, the better.” 

Ives corners hard at the next turn, at the former town center. He feels the back end of the Alfa skidding, but it hangs on by the skin of its teeth and Ives’ reflexes keep it under control. He straightens out and looks in the rearview in time to see Jonesy try to take the turn just as hard—and fail miserably. The back end of the Mustang swings wide. Jonesy tries to correct the turn and overcompensates, sending the Mustang into the dried strip of grass alongside the road. He careens into a jersey wall bordering an empty lot. He vaults over it, crashing down unevenly enough to roll the Mustang once or twice, landing on its roof.

Ives smiles. Perfection.

—

The walkie at Rasher’s belt crackles to life while he’s directing the set-up of Julian’s stage. He steps away from the sound of the power tools and picks up his walkie.

“Go for Rasher.”

“Hey, it’s Charlie. Looks like we just lost the fucker in the Mustang. Took off after the Alfa Romeo, followed it into the ghost town. Cornered wrong and ran into a jersey wall. Don’t know what happened after that, the cameras went out after it flipped over the jersey wall. They were the only ones to take that route so I can’t check if anyone else saw what happened.”

Charlie doesn’t even attempt to sound upset by this. She hated Jonesy from the minute she saw his confederate flag plate. Still, the fact that he followed Seward and Renfield when no one else did makes Rasher extremely suspicious of his accident. He’ll have to let Slink know.

“Great,” he says. “What’d the Alfa do?”

“Looks like they’ve stopped and gotten out. They’re out of the range of their cameras.” 

When the fox hears a rabbit scream… Rasher sighs. “Ugh. Fantastic. Thanks, Charlie.” He groans and returns the walkie to his belt. He looks over at the stage. “Y’all keep going,” he says. “I gotta go find Slink.”

He heads off towards Slink’s trailer at a leisurely pace. He doesn’t want to get in between whatever Seward and Renfield have planned for Jonesy, he hated the bastard just as much as Charlie did for being a homophobe, and he can more than sympathize with Renfield wanting to kill him for beating up Seward. He has absolutely no room to judge them, since he actually has killed homophobes, and for as little as insulting him. He once killed a whole group in the span of about fifteen minutes after they attacked Julian. The “no killing other racers” rule is more for the sake of the show than anything else; Rasher won’t care until Julian cares, and even then it doesn’t actually matter to him—Jonesy would be just another corpse to be devoured like a french fry by the maw. A body’s a body, the maw won’t care and Rasher certainly won’t miss him.

Far as Rasher’s concerned, Jonesy deserves whatever Seward and Renfield do to him.

—

Jonesy is still alive when Boyd and Ives reach the wrecked Mustang. He’s barely conscious, but he’s aware enough to mumble a protest when Boyd reaches through the broken window and cuts his seatbelt free. Boyd isn’t at all careful about it, nicking him several times accidentally-on purpose. He and Ives drag Jonesy out by his arms, dropping him unceremoniously to the pavement. Boyd steps aside as Ives stands over him.

“Well done,” Ives says. “Not only are you a shit excuse for a human being, you’re a shit driver, too.”

Jonesy tries to speak, but only manages a gurgle through a mouth full of broken teeth. He must’ve hit the steering wheel face-first at some point. Ives makes a tutting sound at him.

“Don’t bother trying to speak, you have nothing to say that I want to hear,” he says, crouching down. “You’re a waste of space and a waste of oxygen. You’re a tiresome, tedious little man, and I have but one use for men like you.”

Boyd circles around them and catches sight of Ives’ face. Ives is focused on Jonesy like a dog focuses on a rat, that same intense, predatory hunger. His eyes have gone flat, black with bloodlust, a shark’s eyes in a human face. There is nothing about him to suggest he was ever an ordinary man rather than the killer Boyd knows him to be, has always known him to be; no sense that Ives is anything other than a predator. It would have horrified Boyd once. Now he knows that hunger and rage and bloodlust is echoed in his own face.

Ives holds a hand out. Without a word, Boyd passes his knife to him. Ives holds it under Jonesy’s chin, the point dimpling the hollow of Jonesy’s jaw. He leans down.

“You’re just meat,” Ives hisses. “A pig to be slaughtered.”

Boyd doesn’t need to be told what to do next; they’ve carried out this task countless times before. He gets the rope from their car and deftly binds Jonesy’s ankles. He drags him to the nearest streetlight and flings the end of the rope over the light. With a few sharp tugs Boyd hoists him into the air so that he hangs like a cow on a hook.

Ives comes over then. He’s holding a mug, Boyd sees with mild amusement. Ives pulls Boyd down for a deep kiss, nipping his lower lip before pulling away. Ives then goes to Jonesy and crouches down so he’s near-level with Jonesy’s face.

“I hope that every second you’re burning in hell you remember that two faggots sent you there,” he says. With that, he opens Jonesy’s throat.

Jonesy thrashes weakly for only a moment. He must’ve been nearly dead to begin with. He stills a moment later. Ives puts the mug under the stream of blood pouring from Jonesy’s throat. Once it’s full nearly to the brim, he removes it from the stream and wafts it under his nose, scenting it like a sommelier with a fine wine. He lets out a shivery little sigh of anticipation, his eyes sliding closed. He lifts the mug to his lips as he straightens up. He takes his time drinking it, seemingly savoring every drop, and Boyd’s gaze finds and follows each bob of Ives’ throat. As Ives tilts his head back to catch the last of the blood, a small drop trickles from the corner of his mouth down to his chin. Boyd finds himself moving towards Ives. 

Before Ives can lower his head, Boyd has caught him, one hand at his waist and the other plucking the mug from Ives’ grasp. Boyd licks the blood from Ives’ chin, follows it up to his lips, and licks into his mouth. Ives purrs and wraps his arms around Boyd. He’s hot against him, alive with desire and hunger, pressing himself against Boyd as if trying to broadcast his want through touch alone. Boyd breaks the kiss to lean back and lick blood from Ives’ mustache, then twines his fingers in Ives’ hair and pulls his head back enough to bare his throat for kisses. Ives rewards his initiative with a pleased hum Boyd swears he feels from his lips to the tip of his cock. He kisses up Ives’ neck to his lips again, tastes the dead man’s blood in Ives’ mouth and on his lips as Ives backs them towards their car. 

They tumble into the front seat, Ives landing first and Boyd coming down on top of him, a tangle of arms and legs and shirts: Boyd is trying to unbutton Ives’ shirt while Ives does absolutely nothing to help and instead seems intent on simply getting his hands on Boyd’s chest. There isn’t enough room for this even with the seat pushed all the way back; the Alfa Romeo isn’t a large car, Boyd’s going to be knocking his head on the ceiling if they don’t—he pulls away from Ives’ kiss. He takes the opportunity to strip off his shirt, which briefly seems to stun Ives thanks to the sudden appearance of Boyd’s body, and for a moment he can’t help but bask in Ives’ regard and hunger. Ives lays his palms on Boyd’s flanks, strokes up to his chest and thumbs his nipples, making Boyd arch to his touch with a moan. Ives is always such a hedonist; no matter how worked up he is, he always takes the time to enjoy Boyd’s body, stroking every inch he can get his hands on. Boyd loves it. He suspects it’s mostly for Ives’ own pleasure, but Boyd isn’t going to complain about it—he likes that Ives enjoys his body so much, and certainly Ives’ hands roving over him is more than enjoyable in and of itself.

He moves in to kiss Ives again, dragging his teeth over Ives’ lower lip and making him moan. Boyd finally gets Ives’ shirt open and has to sit back for a moment to admire him, his lean compact body, and for a moment he can only wonder at himself. When did he change so much? When did the sight of his hands on Ives with the intent of pleasing him instead of killing him cease to shock him? When did the feel of Ives’ skin under his palms thrill him with lust? When did he begin to regard each new inch of bared skin with anticipation and desire? He would have been appalled at this once: Ives killed for him, opened a man’s throat and drank his blood right in front of him, and all because that man had attacked Boyd. If the man that Boyd had been, that centuries-gone morose man who jumped at shadows, could see who he would become—could see that one day a man would kill another for him, and he’d take that murderer into his arms as he has countless times before—

Ives pushes up to mouth at Boyd’s nipple even as Boyd’s knee slips and digs painfully against the seatbelt buckle. His face twists in mingled pleasure and pain.

“Ives—Ives, wait,” Boyd grits out. 

Ives growls against Boyd’s chest. “Boyd, I’m warning you—“

“No, it’s—hang on—“

Boyd lifts himself from Ives’ lap, ignoring Ives’ protest, and turns so that his back is pressed to Ives’ chest. It frees him to spread his legs as much as he wants, and he very definitely wants to spread them wide for Ives. Ives clearly approves of the changed position; he dips his head to the crook of Boyd’s neck to leave biting kisses there, clutches at his chest with one hand, squeezes Boyd’s erection through his jeans with the other. Boyd gasps and arches, grasping back blindly at Ives’ hair. 

“Shit—!” He fumbles at his belt buckle and fly with his free hand, increasingly hungry to feel Ives’ touch on his cock. Once again Ives is no help, too eager and greedy to even wait for Boyd to get his pants down; he shoves his hand straight into Boyd’s underwear as soon as Boyd has his zipper open. Boyd gasps again as Ives pulls him out and strokes him hard and quick. He rolls his hips unthinkingly, trying to rut up into Ives’ hand, and manages to grind his ass against Ives’ still-covered cock. Ives lets out a sound somewhere between a groan and an actual whimper. 

“Fuck, Boyd,” he half-whines against Boyd’s ear, “turn around—please—need your hand on me—“

Seatbelt buckle be damned, Boyd can’t deny Ives a blessed thing when he sounds so desperate and needy. He lifts off Ives and turns back around, this time making sure to get his knee out of the way of the buckle. Ives looks wrecked already, his chest flushed halfway up his neck, pupils blown so wide his eyes look black, his erection tenting his trousers. Boyd leans down and drags his tongue along the column of Ives’ throat, just to taste him, just to feel the vibration of his voice as he moans so prettily, rolls his hips against Ives’ when Ives gets his hands into Boyd’s jeans to squeeze his ass. 

He draws back and opens Ives’ trousers, takes a moment to run the palm of his hand over the swell of Ives’ cock where it strains the fabric of his underwear just to tease. He gets him out before Ives can complain about it, pulling his underwear down so his cock springs free, hard and leaking and so, so hot against his palm. He strokes him as he leans down to kiss Ives, and moans into the kiss when Ives gets his own hand around them both. They rut into each other’s hands as best as they can, breaking their kiss the closer they get to climax, both moaning each other’s names as they wind tighter and tighter until—

Boyd breaks first and comes hard onto Ives’ belly, his voice cracking on a wordless yell as he arches like a bow. He sags against Ives, utterly boneless for a long moment, incapable of anything other than panting against the crook of Ives’ neck. He can tell Ives is still stroking himself, even as he squeezes Boyd’s ass with his other hand. After a moment, Boyd collects enough of himself to slide out of Ives’ lap, halfway out of the car since there’s nowhere near enough room in the footwell for a grown man, and without hesitating sucks Ives’ cock into his mouth almost to the hilt. 

Ives yells, clutching Boyd’s hair nearly hard enough to hurt. 

“Oh, christ, Boyd—“ He whines as Boyd sucks him hard. “Boyd, Boyd—fuck—I can’t—!” He’s gratifyingly close—all it takes is the very lightest scrape of teeth against him and Ives comes in a hot rush, spilling thick down Boyd’s throat. Boyd doesn’t miss a drop. 

Ives sags back against the seat. Boyd levers himself up to lick his belly clean, uncaring that it’s his own cum he’s licking off Ives. Ives lets out a tired little sound. After a moment he tugs Boyd up for a kiss. Boyd settles in his lap, hands framing Ives’ jaw, their kiss slow and easy and lazy in marked contrast to their urgency mere moments ago. At length Boyd draws back somewhat.

“We should go butcher the body and get back on track,” he murmurs, lips brushing Ives’. His voice is hoarse.

“Mmm, probably.” Ives draws him into another kiss. “Mustn’t disappoint our fans and arrive late.” He gently pushes Boyd back, but doesn’t move his hands from Boyd’s hips. His thumbs rub over the sweep of Boyd’s hipbones. “You’ll have to do any precision work, though.”

Boyd chuckles and leans down for one last kiss. “What, did I blow your brains out?”

“As a matter of fact…”

Boyd just laughs again. He tucks himself back into his jeans and gets out of the car. He doesn’t bother putting his shirt back on, it’ll only get covered in blood if he does and he knows Ives will appreciate the view. He goes to get their knives.

—

Julian stares down at the wrecked Mustang with his face twisted in an expression somewhere between disappointment, rage, and faint disgust. The car is trashed, the front end crumpled in like a soda can and the engine destroyed. It looks like it’d been a spectacular wreck; the footage from inside the car was pretty impressive. Too bad it happened off the main course, they have no exterior footage. There weren’t any cameras placed in the abandoned town, since no one expected anyone to actually take that route. It was the least direct, after all. Rasher thinks that’s what’s curling Julian’s lip, disappointment at missing so gruesome a wreck. They didn’t even get any good gore out of the fucker’s death, since it happened off-camera too. But if the car’s bad, Dipshit’s worse—not even the engine would be able to get much use out of the corpse. Rasher thinks even the maw would scorn it. Honestly, it’s suspicious as hell. There’s so much damage the body’s barely recognizable as human, too much for any car wreck; much of the meat has been stripped, the long bones cracked open and the marrow scraped out, some of the organs removed. It looks like he was—

Rasher’s eyes widen in sudden understanding.

“Julian,” he says slowly, “this guy was butchered.”

“Yes, I can see that, Rasher—“

“No, I mean butchered. Most of this isn’t from the wreck.”

Julian’s expression turns thoughtful. He looks at Rasher, eyes narrowed slightly. “Explain,” he says.

“Look what’s left,” Rasher says, pointing. “Liver, intestines, brain, entrails. That’s all, y’know, offal. Like, I know people eat animal liver and intestines, but I wouldn’t bother eating a human liver, they’re fucking disgusting. And eating brains is how you get kuru. Look what’s missing: lungs, heart, marrow, muscle tissue.” The missing muscle tissue roughly corresponds to the cuts of a cow. He catches and holds Julian’s gaze. “He was killed for food. There’s another cannibal around here.”

Julian looks away and stares at the corpse. “Well, fuck me,” he says, voice dark. He looks at Rasher again. “It was Boyd and Ives.”

“Excuse me? How do you know that?” Julian is still convinced Seward and Renfield are really Boyd and Ives, apparently, even though there’s been no evidence of this so far. Rasher, as he so often does, just rolls with it.

“You mean besides the fact that he beat the shit out of Boyd?” Julian gives Rasher a look that clearly shows he thinks Rasher should keep up.

“Come on, Julian, no one liked him, anyone could have—“

“You’re sure this was done by a cannibal, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but—“

“Well, it wasn’t you. You know better, and besides, you were busy at the next stop with the roadies. I know I didn’t recruit any other cannibals other than Boyd and Ives, I like to keep track of who all eats people. And I saw Ives talking to him before the race. And we know he followed them here. Therefore, it was Boyd and Ives. They had a motive and they’re more than capable of butchering him like this. Check the footage, I guarantee it’ll confirm it was them. Find them. Make it painfully clear to them that the other racers are not food, including the ones that piss them off.” Julian starts walking away from the wreckage, and Rasher hurries to catch up. Julian looks over his shoulder at Rasher. “I don’t want them dead, I still have plans for them, but beyond that, I’m giving you free rein. Besides, you’re a cannibal, they’re cannibals. They’ll listen to you.”

Rasher stares, flabbergasted, at him. “Julian, what does that have to do with—I—“ He closes his eyes hard for a moment. “Do you. Do you think there’s some kind of… cannibal union or something? That we’re all members of some kind of club and I’m the president?” The image comes to him suddenly of a group of people sitting around a rotisserie human torso, everyone wearing “Hello my name is” name tags and discussing the best roast recipes. He barks out a laugh, unable to help it. “Business cards! Matching little hats!” 

Julian gives him a dirty look. “Okay, first of all, fuck you,” he grumbles. His ears are red.

Rasher’s laughing properly now. “Oh, a secret handshake!”

“Second of all, fuck you very much.”

“This meeting of Lodge 69 of the Cannibal Connoisseur’s Club—”

“For _fuck’s sake_ —“


	5. a body on the step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> slink wasn't kidding when he said 'no killing the other racers'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: violence, gore, monster body horror, cannibalism, eldritch abominations

Rasher keeps to the shadows of the Mayhem Party, released from his position as Julian’s faithful toady for the evening so he can deal with Renfield and Seward. He’s got roadies keeping an eye on Julian; he doesn’t trust those two as far as he can throw them, and he wants eyes on Julian in case they try something. He doesn’t think Julian’s holding those devils nearly so well as he ought. The roadies, powerlifters who move as quietly as stalking cats despite their size, might not be able to take down two men who may or may not be supernatural monsters, but they should be able to slow them down long enough for the cavalry to arrive in the form of Rasher at his most monstrous. (He still doesn’t believe they’re not human, but he’s not taking chances.) He feels bad using roadies as meat shields, but ultimately and shamelessly he ranks Julian far above even the most loyal and competent roadies. 

He turns his thoughts back to the task at hand. He hasn’t spotted Seward; Seward lingers at the party long enough to make himself known and ducks out as soon as he can. It’s not unlike how Rasher stays at the parties until he’s certain he’s not needed, at which point he immediately leaves. The similarity, observed almost unwittingly, makes Rasher uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to share any traits with these two. He might have to make them prey at some point, and he doesn’t like thinking about similarities between himself and his prey. He’s hoping to spot Renfield, really, Renfield seems like the leader of the two. If he can get Renfield to behave, Seward will surely fall in line, and he’s not sure Renfield is as vulnerable to threats against Seward as Seward probably is to threats against Renfield. Julian had gone to Seward with his blackmail scheme, thinking him the more malleable one, but Rasher thinks that was down more to what Julian had on them. Plenty of animals will behave when threatened with a cage. Rasher doesn’t have that option, just the threat of violence. He hopes Renfield won’t react with violence of his own. He isn’t afraid of Renfield, but fighting off an attack from him sounds too much like actual work.

He’s lurking in the shadow of the Suck Bus when he finally spots Renfield without Seward, glad-handing with his own little coterie of groupies. He clearly enjoys preening before them, and Rasher is very abruptly reminded of Julian. He bites back a snigger; likely neither of them would welcome the comparison any more than Rasher welcomes the comparison with Seward. He hopes Renfield doesn’t plan on staying there for long; he’s uninterested in watching Renfield play celebrity. There are other things he could be doing, things he’d rather be doing, like shoving his whole arm into the maw. Besides, normally when he puts this much effort into stalking someone, it’s for a better reason than simply scaring them. His payoff here isn’t going to be nearly as satisfying. He just wants this all over with.

Fortunately for Rasher’s patience, Renfield soon extracts himself from his entourage and heads for the edge of the party and beyond. Rasher follows him, silent as the grave.

—

“Renfield.”

Ives stops. He’s on his way back to Boyd and their car; Boyd has so far managed to dodge every Mayhem Party since the first and for once Ives wants to join him. He enjoys the attention and the fawning groupies, he likes being the center of attention, but tonight he’s more interested in Boyd and the remains of Jonesy than the party. He’s on the fringes of it now, just close enough to feel the bass in his bones. He looks around; he’s unfortunately in the shadow of a number of trucks, unable to see who called his name. His eyes narrow.

“Who’s there?” he says. 

For a moment nothing happens, and then Rasher saunters into view. There’s something wrong with his eyes; they catch and throw back the moonlight like an animal’s. He’s not wearing the leather jacket and corset; just an oversize faded button-down that hangs like a tent on his skinny frame. He looks even less threatening than normal, but still, that eyeshine… it puts Ives on edge. Normal humans don’t have eyeshine.

“What do you want?” Ives asks.

“Slink and I know what you and Seward did,” Rasher says.

Ives goes still. Some people just are too damn clever. He lets out an audible sigh and puts his hands in his pocket. He flexes his right hand so the knife hidden in his sleeve drops down into his grasp. He gives Rasher a broad, toothy, humorless grin.

“And what, pray tell, did Robert and I do?” he asks, half sing-song.

“You killed and ate Jonesy,” Rasher replies. He crosses his skinny arms. “Even though you were both told that killing other racers is off-limits. Slink was gonna have him killed anyway for assaulting your man, but you beat him to it. He doesn’t like people stealing his toys.”

Shit. Ives keeps his expression disbelieving and huffs out a laugh. “You’re mistaken, I assure you.”

“Not fucking likely. I saw what you left behind.”

Ives laughs again, though his mind is whirling. How did Rasher catch on? The entire race is full of psychopaths, surely any of them would be as viable as Boyd and Ives as suspects. How did Rasher—wait.

Ives steps marginally closer to Rasher and lowers his voice. “What makes you think we did it?” he asks.

“He beat the shit out of Seward, and I know what a cannibal’s butchering looks like. According to Slink, who handpicks the racers, you’re the only cannibals in town.”

Ives lets himself grin. “Sounds like you’re speaking from personal experience,” he says, stepping closer. If he gets close enough, he’ll gut Rasher. This knife isn’t long, but it’s long enough to spill Rasher’s intestines on the ground. Surely the twiggy bastard won’t be able to put up much of a fight, not against Ives. Ives’ll snap him in two. Even if Rasher’s more of a predator than he seems, no normal human can win a fight against Ives. “Is this the pot calling the kettle black?”

Rasher steps closer as well. Good. “Doesn’t matter. Consider this your first and last warning. Stop killing racers, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“You’ll have to deal with me, and you don’t want that.”

Rasher’s within arms’ reach now. Ives grins. “I think we’ll take the risk.” He strikes, aiming right for Rasher’s stomach. 

He doesn’t even come close. Something shoots out from between two of the buttons of Rasher’s shirt and wraps tight around Ives’ wrist and forearm. It’s thick and muscled like a snake, slimy like a slug, and unfathomably strong. For the first time in a very long while, Ives knows pure fear.

“What—what the fuck—“ He tries to pull his arm free, but the thing just tightens painfully. He reaches for the knife with his other hand, thinking to cut the thing, but a second one shoots out, popping one of Rasher’s shirt buttons on the way. It wraps as tightly around his other wrist as its twin, which tightens enough that Ives can feel the bones of his wrist grinding together. His hand goes numb and he drops the knife. Animal fear colors his voice. “What the fuck are you?”

Rasher lowers his head a little so his eyes mostly disappear into the shadows of his tattooed eye sockets, leaving only the reptilian gleam of his pupils. He lifts his hands to the top button of his shirt. He starts unbuttoning his shirt, looking as bored as he might if Ives were a doctor and Rasher his patient. Ives can see black snaking up Rasher’s skin, like a tattoo but darker, texturally wrong, curling up his bony body to and past his shoulders. He’s appallingly skinny. And then Ives sees exactly what kind of a mistake he’s just made. 

Rasher opens his shirt to reveal the obscene gleam of red ribs like the skin has been peeled back, the black hide of his hollowed belly from which the black streaks climb like kudzu, the terrible vertical mouth stretching from his waistband to his solar plexus from which extend the—tongues? Tentacles? The lips of the mouth slide back to reveal jagged teeth, sharp and vicious, and a low rumble shakes the air and turns Ives’ knees to water. 

“You’re not the only monster around here,” Rasher says, stepping closer to Ives. “You might be a scary bastard where you come from, but around here there ain’t nothing scarier than me. I’m a fuckin’ abomination, you little shit.” Ives tries to back away, but the tentacles yank him back. “We’re letting you off for Jonesy, since no one liked him, but leave the other racers alone. If you don’t, Julian’ll let me off the leash, and I’ll eat your boyfriend.” A third tentacle—good god, how many are in there—lolls out of the mouth and lifts like a snake, dripping slime. “Do we have an understanding?”

Anger flashes hot behind Ives’ eyes. He doesn’t take kindly to being threatened or intimidated, and he never has and never will. He spits in Rasher’s face. Rasher makes a disgusted face and wipes it off. A fourth tentacle shoots out of the maw and wraps around Ives’ throat, not tight enough to do any damage to his throat but enough to frighten. Then, to his horror, Ives feels himself being lifted by the neck and wrists. This hurts, the strain on his body is too much. He chokes as his feet clear the ground, mind reeling with the sheer impossibility of all of this. Where the fuck are the tentacles coming from, does Rasher not have any organs whatsoever? Are they all just coiled up inside him? How are they so strong?

“Do you think I’m joking, you dumb motherfucker?” Rasher snarls. “I’d eat him right now, but I’m only supposed to scare you. Leave. The other racers. Alone. Or I’ll kill Seward while you watch.” The tentacle around Ives’ neck tightens, and Ives’ vision goes black at the edges. “Got it?”

Ives nods frantically. He’s beaten and he knows it, he’s a stubborn man but he’s not so stubborn he’d pick a fight with a—whatever Rasher is. His will to live is as strong as it’s ever been, and he knows fighting Rasher would be suicide. And looking into Rasher’s old blood-brown eyes, he knows with a grim and terrifying certainty that Rasher isn’t lying, that he would have no qualms about eating Boyd. If backing down and showing his belly will keep safe the only man Ives gives half a damn about, the only true companion he’s ever really known, the only other man like him in the world, Ives will absolutely roll over like a whipped dog.

Rasher drops him, all the tentacles unwinding suddenly, and Ives falls to his hands and knees in a coughing heap. God, Rasher had him almost a foot above the ground. His throat burns.

A tentacle then wraps around his right arm, too fast for him to avoid, and flexes. The crack of Ives’ bones seems as loud as a gunshot, the pop of his skin rupturing as the bones push through almost inaudible in comparison. Ives’ vision goes white with pain and he screams. He falls to the dirt as Rasher releases him, clutching at his arm. Blood soaks his sleeve, pouring down his wrist in a crimson stream, roars and pounds in his ears as agony rips up his arm. He barely sees Rasher lean down like he’s speaking to a child, barely hears his last warning against killing the racers, barely realizes when he’s gone.

Ives stumbles to his feet, holding his arm tight against his body.

“Boyd,” he manages through gritted teeth. He turns and makes his way towards their tent.

—

Boyd is contentedly sprawled on their camp cot reading Look Homeward, Angel when Ives blunders into their tent clutching his arm. He startles badly, but the ugly angle of Ives’ forearm through his blood-soaked sleeve drives his fear from his mind.

“Jesus—!” He scrambles to his feet, dropping his book, and rushes to Ives’ side. “What the fuck happened?”

“Rasher fucking happened!” Ives manages to say through gritted teeth. His voice is hoarse and it looks like there’s fading bruises around his neck, but his arm is the more immediate injury. “He’s not fucking human, Boyd, I don’t know what the fuck he is—“ He groans in pain. “Fuck, fuck, this hurts!”

“Let go, let me take a look.”

With obvious reluctance, Ives holds out his injured arm. Boyd winces in sympathy: his forearm looks like a kinked hose. He takes his knife and cuts Ives’ sleeve away, as carefully as he can. Ives flinches and hisses in pain with every touch of the blade against his arm, no matter how light. There’s a slimy substance all over his sleeve, clear and slick and slightly tacky like mucus or a slug’s slime, and Boyd has no idea what it is. Ives is clearly in no state to explain, so Boyd doesn’t ask, just continues cutting his sleeve away. 

“Jesus, Ives,” he says in frightened awe once Ives’ arm is revealed. “What the fuck did he do to you?” 

Ives’ arm is mottled with bruising under the blood, the broken edges of his radius and ulna stark white against his skin and muscle. It’s one of the nastiest compound fractures Boyd has ever seen, as though someone had taken Ives’ arm and snapped it like a twig. Ives gives him a glare through eyes glassy with pain.

“Tell you later,” he grits out. “Set it.”

Boyd doesn’t argue. He leads Ives to the cot and gets him to sit down before going to the car. He pops the trunk. There’s a professional-grade first aid kit there as well as the cooler they’ve been keeping their meat in; Boyd will have to splint Ives’ arm. Ives won’t need it for long, maybe a few days, but he still needs it for now. He bypasses the cooler, Ives isn’t fond of raw meat though Boyd knows he’s perfectly willing to eat it raw, and goes instead for the jerky they’d brought for emergencies. Boyd figures a compound fracture certainly qualifies as he tucks it into his shirt pocket. He opens his belt and pulls it free, folds it twice before handing it to Ives. There’s an unpleasant flash of memory that hits him then, the fetid little hole and Reich and the sickly crunch of his femur sliding back into place. With effort he forces it back. Now is not the time for brooding on the past. The jerky will do most of the work, including fixing any misalignments, but it won’t reset the bones to start with. That much is down to Boyd.

He goes to his knees before Ives and considers the end of the bones, Ives’ arm resting on his upturned hands. It’s a clean break, at least, resetting it shouldn’t be hard. He takes Ives’s arm in a firm grip, one hand above the break and the other below it. He catches his gaze.

“Ready?” he asks. 

Ives bites down on Boyd’s belt and nods. Boyd tightens his grip and carefully pulls Ives’ arm below the wrist. Ives screams, teeth clenching hard around the belt, drowning out the sound of his bones crunching as they shift back almost to true. Boyd doesn’t need to hear it to remember the sound, that awful cracking noise of bone grinding together. As long as he lives, he’ll never forget that sound, or the feel of realigning bones, or the sheer agony. It sets his teeth on edge. Blood spurts out, catching Boyd across the cheek. Boyd cusses and resets his grip. It’s not easy, Ives’ arm is devilishly slick with blood. 

“One more, okay, one more time—“ He pulls again, making Ives scream into the belt again, and this time Ives’ bones slide back where they belong with one last sickening crunch. “There, Jesus, I got it.” 

Ives lets out something close to a sob and spits Boyd’s belt to the floor as Boyd cleans, bandages, and splints his arm. As soon as the splint is finished, he sags hard against Boyd with his arm held between them, taking great gasping breaths. Boyd quickly embraces Ives, holds him close and tight and presses kisses against his hair. Ives is trembling, vibrating like a high-tensile wire in Boyd’s arms. It’s been a while since either of them have been seriously hurt and Ives is clearly and uncharacteristically rattled. Boyd holds him until his shaking eases and his breathing slows, then hands over the jerky. Ives tears into it with a will, but doesn’t move out of Boyd’s grasp, just puts his head on Boyd’s shoulder. He only seems to want to be held. Well, Boyd has no problem obliging him.

But when Ives shows no desire to pull away after a few minutes, Boyd grows concerned. “Ives…”

“I never thought I’d meet a bigger monster than us,” Ives says quietly. “Rasher…” He shudders. “He isn’t human. Not even close. Hell, I’m not sure he ever was.”

“Ives, what… what’re you talking about?”

Ives’ good hand clenches in the back of Boyd’s shirt. “He confronted me about Jonesy, he threatened us. Naturally I tried to kill him.” Ives looks up and catches Boyd’s eye. “He took offense.”

“And broke your arm.” Boyd doesn’t even try to keep the skepticism out of his voice. He’s seen Rasher, he doesn’t look strong enough to break a pencil, let alone an arm. Boyd knows for a fact how hard bones are to break deliberately.

There’s genuine fear in Ives’ brown eyes. “He didn’t use his hands,” he says.

And he tells Boyd how Rasher broke his arm.

Boyd waits until Ives is asleep that night before slipping out of bed and away from him. It’s not that he thinks Ives was lying or mistaken, or that he doesn’t believe him; not exactly, anyway. He’d seen the damage to Ives’ arm, how cleanly his bones were broken and the severe bruising, he’d seen the slime on Ives’ skin and sleeve. But it was such a fantastical story, such a strange tale, that even with the evidence under his nose Boyd can’t quite believe it. Certainly he tells Ives he believes him, but he has to see it himself. It’s not the kind of story one believes when one hears.

And, well. Rasher hurt Ives. Ives is a supremely irritating asshole of a complete monster, but he’s Boyd’s supremely irritating asshole of a complete monster. The damage they’ve done to each other is in equal measure and has long healed. If anyone has the right to hurt Ives, it’s Boyd, and Rasher is going to pay for breaking what isn’t his to break.

He stands in the night air, wondering where Rasher might be this time of night. Slink’s trailer? They’re obviously lovers, that’s probably a safe bet. But how to get him out of there if that’s the case? Boyd has no interest in Slink, aside from considering him a threat. Maybe he can lure Rasher out with something. Boyd doesn’t know what, and nothing immediately comes to mind. In the end he decides he’ll just try to get the lay of the land. He can strategize on the fly, certainly, but having information will only help him. Besides, as the saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. He sets off in search of Slink’s trailer. 

He doesn’t find Slink’s trailer, but he does find the fuel truck. It’s sitting amongst the other crew vehicles, the only one making a sound—the low hum of the refrigeration unit. To Boyd’s surprise, the door is open. Light spills out. Is someone stealing meat? There are sounds drifting out as well, horrible wet crunches and a low growl Boyd knows isn’t coming from the refrigeration unit. He edges up to have a look, advances as quietly as he can up the ramp. The light’s coming from a hanging work light on one of the empty meat hooks, illuminating Rasher’s bare back where he stands at the far end of the truck. His back looks overlong, Boyd realizes with a chill, his spine too prominent even for his bony frame. The shifting of what muscle he has under the bull skull tattooed on his back makes the tattoo look like a living, moving thing, like it’ll turn and fix Boyd in the stare of empty eye sockets. He can’t quite see what Rasher’s doing.

Without warning Rasher lifts his head and looks over his shoulder. His eyes catch and reflect the light like an animal’s. Boyd thinks of a wolf he saw on the long trip to Fort Spencer, a half-starved beast with eyes that seemed to glow like coals and showed little fear even when Martha shot at it. It showed up one night and hovered on the edge of their camp for several hours. Eventually it vanished. Boyd never saw it again.

Meeting Rasher’s eerie gaze now, Boyd realizes there are far darker things in the world than wolves.

Rasher’s body turns to follow his gaze, and Boyd gasps. His brain for a moment can’t process what he’s seeing, what he’s caught Rasher doing. His belly is concave, hollowed out like a pumpkin, with red ribs curving over black skin and the massive maw that’s currently shoving a corpse into itself with thick tentacles. Streaks of black spread from his belly like spilled ink on wet paper. There’s no indication of where the corpse is going in Rasher; no part of him is stretching or swelling to accommodate it. The weight of it drags his torso down, at least until more of it vanishes into the maw itself and Rasher slowly straightens up. His head nearly brushes the ceiling. He steps forward.

Boyd stumbles backwards and falls hard. He rolls down the ramp in an ungainly sprawl, knocking his head against the metal more than once, and lays half-winded and staring up at Rasher as he comes closer. Rasher stops at the door, then reaches out with clawed hands that have gone rot-black to his elbows to grab the truck doors. He stares at Boyd like a dog stares at a rat. He grasps the doors and pulls them shut with a clang, shutting himself in the truck.

Boyd barely realizes Rasher has, essentially, retreated. He’s too busy trying to process what he’d seen. He gets to his feet and stumbles back to their tent, mind reeling, thoughts spinning too fast to grab a hold of. What in God’s name did he just see? That was— Rasher is— he makes it back to their tent and drops to the side of their camp cot, sitting stunned. 

“Boyd?”

He hears Ives stir behind him, feels him sit up and lay his hand on his shoulder. 

“Boyd, what is it?” Ives asks.

Boyd turns to him, and from the way Ives’ expression turns startled Boyd looks shell-shocked. He certainly feels it.

“I saw Rasher in the fuel truck,” he says. “He… He was… He’s a…” Boyd trails off.

Ives doesn’t say anything, just holds him close.

—

Rasher sees Boyd avoiding his gaze the next morning, sees that Ives has a splint on his arm, and grins a little. It’s so nice putting other predators in their place. Rasher doesn’t want to be top dog, but he’s no one’s bitch.

“Rasher!”

Well, maybe one man’s bitch. He turns to face Julian as he approaches. “Yeah?”

“I left a recording on my desk, use it to get everyone under way,” Julian says. His mouth is bent in a moue of distaste, and Rasher can guess why. “I’ve been summoned.”  
  
Rasher makes a sympathetic noise. “Sorry.”

“How’s the cannibal situation?”

“Think I put the fear of us into them. Renfield tried to gut me last night but the maw caught him. Broke his arm, told him I’d eat his fuckin’ boyfriend if they didn’t cut their shit out. Scared the hell out of Seward later by accident, he caught me in the fuel truck.” Rasher shrugs. “Think they’re gonna behave.”

“Excellent, only good news I’ve had all morning.” Julian sighs and pulls Rasher down for a quick kiss. “See you at the next stop.”

Rasher watches him step into the shadows, watches the world split open in a gash like an infected wound, watches Julian disappear through a rippling curtain of blood. He sighs, pushing down the trepidation that always washes over him when Julian goes to Heart, and heads into Julian’s trailer for the recording. 


	6. the black wagon returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the plot congeals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: consentacles/naughty tentacles, sex, violence, gore, implied voyeurism of the reality tv variety

Ives is uncharacteristically quiet, leaning halfway out the window like a dog. He’s not driving, though his arm is perfectly fine now, he took the splint off as soon as they were in the car. Boyd wonders how Rasher will react when Ives shows up with his arm whole once more, though probably a tentacle monster wouldn’t bat an eye at mere accelerated healing, then wonders what’s going on in Ives’ mind. He’ll want revenge, he’s a vindictive little bastard, but Boyd is content not to poke the tentacle monster unless it’s with a very, very long stick. He hopes he can talk Ives out of whatever harebrained revenge schemes he has in his head, but it’s a slim hope—there’s almost no talking Ives out of anything, let alone getting back at someone who humiliated him in some way.

Boyd opens his mouth to speak, but Ives cuts him off:

“We’re going to kill Rasher next,” Ives says.

Shit. “We can’t.”

“And why not?” He turns to Boyd, his eyes smoldering with rage. “We got to kill the man who hurt you, didn’t we? Why can’t we kill the man who hurt me?”

“Because Rasher’s not human—“

“Neither are we—“

“He’s a _bigger monster_! Literally! Look, you didn’t see him in the fuel truck, you don’t know what he can become. He had claws as long as the palm of my hand! He was ten feet tall!” He takes his eyes off the road for a moment. “Hey. Look at me.” He waits for Ives to fix his glare on him before he continues: “I saw Rasher eating a corpse with that mouth on his belly. The tentacles were just… shoveling it in.” He can’t suppress a shudder. “There was no sign of where they went. None. Somehow that thing on his belly let him eat at least one entire corpse without showing any indication of it.”

Ives opens his mouth as if to argue, but he closes it again. He stays silent for so long that Boyd looks over at him, and sees to his surprise a certain sheepishness in his expression. Boyd’s eyes narrow.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asks, a warning tone in his voice.

Ives shifts in his seat a little. “Remember how I mentioned the speculation about him?”

“Yes…”

Ives sighs before continuing, “Well, allegedly at the end of season three he turned into a monster and ate the entire race except for a few racers. According to rumor he even ate Slink, but since Slink’s still here—“

“Jesus fucking Christ, don’t you think that’s important information to share?!”

“I thought it was impossible—“

“Let me remind you that you healed a compound fracture of both bones in your forearm overnight thanks to the magic of cannibalism.”

Ives just glares at him. “Come off it, would you have given any credence to it had I told you? Honestly, if you hadn’t seen him in the fuel truck, would you believe that he could turn into a ten-foot, four-armed monster with a gaping maw on his belly?”

“Wait, four arms? I only saw him with two—“

“Don’t dodge the question.”

Boyd lets his head fall back a little. “No,” he admits, “no, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that doesn’t matter, you still should have said something, even if it was just that Rasher’s another killer.”

Ives doesn’t reply, just turns to stare out the window. Boyd counts it as a victory. Neither speaks for several minutes.

“We study him,” Boyd finally says. “Figure out what his weaknesses are. Then we take advantage of them. We won’t win any other way, he’s too much monster for us otherwise.” He looks over at Ives. “Okay?”

Ives eyes him, but then gives a short, sharp nod. Boyd reaches over and lays a hand on his leg, and Ives doesn’t push it away. He’s still pissed, Boyd knows, but for now he’ll behave. Boyd has always been the more sensible one of them and he knows that Ives knows it. He’ll trust Boyd. Neither speaks for several minutes. Ives has gone back to half-leaning out of the window, head propped on one hand. He straightens.

“Hitchhiker,” he says. Boyd squints and sees, practically hidden by the heat haze, someone walking along the side of the road. Ives looks at him with murder in his dark eyes. “Pull over once we pass them.”

Boyd does as he’s told. They pass the hitchhiker, but Boyd guides the car onto the shoulder, catching the hitchhiker in the cloud of dust kicked up by the tires. Ives twists in his seat and reaches into the rear footwell for the tire iron they keep back there. He’s out of the car almost before Boyd has it stopped, striding towards the hitchhiker. He’s making no effort to hide the tire iron. Boyd puts the car in park and gets out in time to hear the hitchhiker’s confused cry when he spots the tire iron. Boyd starts towards them.

“Hey, man, come on, put it down!” the hitchhiker’s saying. Ives is still heading for him like a lion bearing down on a frightened lamb. “Come on, I ain’t—man, what’re you—“

Ives charges him. The man yells and turns to run, but Ives is too fast. He’s within range in seconds, and swings the tire iron and smashes the man’s skull wide open. The man drops to the ground, and Ives brings the tire iron down on his skull again, drops to his knees over the body and smashes the man’s skull again, and again, and again. Blood flies through the air, spattering the gravel, the road, Ives. By the time Boyd reaches him, Ives is a mess of blood and brains, the hitchhiker’s head is little more than a smear in the gravel, and the tire iron is covered in gore. Ives drops it, indifferent, as his body sags. He’s panting. 

Boyd lays a hand on his shoulder. Ives clutches it, his own hand slick with blood. He leans against Boyd’s leg.

“Feel better?” Boyd asks quietly.

Ives nods.

“Come on, let’s get him into the engine, unless you want to eat him.”

Ives doesn’t. Together they lift the corpse, Ives by the shoulders and Boyd by the ankles, and carry it to the car. Boyd pops the hood. The engine’s jaws part as if it senses the corpse. Boyd helps Ives get it up to the engine, but Ives is the one to dump it in; he’s already covered in blood, after all. Once the engine’s chewed up the corpse, Ives goes to the trunk. He strips off his bloodied shirt, swaps it for a clean one, uses what clean parts were left of his other shirt to wipe the blood from his arms and face. Boyd stands waiting for him by the driver’s side door. Ives, shirt hanging open, goes to him.

Boyd isn’t entirely sure what to expect; Ives is unpredictable at times. He could just as easily stab Boyd as anything, especially if he’s still mad that Boyd won’t let him kill Rasher yet. But he just steps into Boyd’s space and puts his arms around his waist and his head on his shoulder. Boyd wraps his arms around him, slipping his hands under Ives’ shirt.

They stand like this for a long moment. Then they part and get back in the car.

There’s nothing left of the hitchhiker but blood-stained gravel and chunks of clothing the engine didn’t want.

—

The night’s party has been set up for an hour by the time Julian returns to his trailer. Late afternoon sun knifes through the gaps in the blackout curtains over the windows, giving Rasher more than enough light to read by. He’s stretched on the bed with his nose buried in his much-loved copy of _Helter Skelter_ , shirtless and corset-less, soaking up a rare moment of peace. He lifts his head when the doorknob rattles and turns. Julian comes in, shoulders bowed just enough for Rasher to notice and his tread unusually heavy, as if his typical manic grace is too much to ask of him just now. 

“Hey,” Rasher calls. 

Julian looks over to him and sags as he kicks the door shut with his heel. He tosses his hat to the desk, his jacket to the back of the chair, and himself into bed. He goes down like a corpse, just lays next to Rasher with his face in the pillow and limbs starfished out, uncaring of his boots on the blankets. Rasher pets him with one hand and goes back to his book. For several minutes there is only the occasional sound of Rasher turning pages. Eventually Julian’s arm moves, finds Rasher’s torso and hauls him close. He rolls onto his side to snake his other arm under Rasher and scoots to tuck himself up against Rasher’s side, and lays his head on Rasher’s shoulder. Rasher puts his arm around him, kisses the top of his head. Another several minutes pass in relative silence. 

Finally Julian huffs a sigh and sits up. Rasher closes his book, watches in silence as Julian tugs his boots off, tossing them one at a time off the side of the bed. He unties his cravat and lets it hang around his neck as opens the first two buttons of his shirt. Rasher leans in to plant a kiss to the dip in his collarbone, then takes Julian’s hands in his. They’re cold. Reflexively he checks Julian’s left ear as he always does when Julian comes back from Heart; something in him eases when he sees it’s still pierced. If he’d died there, if he’d come back in a new body, the hole would be gone. Julian wasn’t killed this time. Rasher relaxes slightly.

“How’d it go?” he asks. Julian pulls a face.

“Not as badly as it could have,” he says. “Boyd and Ives had the decency to enjoy a post-murder fuck in the front seat and someone thought Boyd has a great chest.” He scowls. “They still let Aki rough me up, since the engine was destroyed. Waste of resources, misuse of company equipment, loss of company money, blah blah.” He tilts his head to show Rasher the bruises on his jaw and neck, fading to yellow but still visible. Something twists in Rasher’s heart at the sight. Impulsively he kisses one of the bruises. Julian smiles as he tilts his head to one side, letting out a little purr of contentment that Rasher savors; he does so love to please. “Also Boyd and Ives are planning on studying you to learn your weaknesses, they want to kill you for what you did to Ives.”

“No more or less than I expected, honestly. I’m not really worried.” He’s come to the conclusion that Renfield and Seward are more bark than bite, especially compared to him. The look on Seward’s face when he caught Rasher in the fuel truck was priceless.

“Mm. Well, nevertheless.” Julian tilts his head further, letting Rasher continue to kiss his neck.

“What’d the corporate shits think of them luring Jackass away?” Rasher asks after a moment.

Julian’s voice darkens when he speaks. “They threatened to replace me,” he growls. “They tried to say I have no control over the race, just because one, one, team slips my leash and kills another racer!” His hands are trembling. Rasher can read anxiety in the lines of tension around Julian’s eyes and the set of his lips.

Rasher bends low and kisses Julian’s knuckles without lifting his hands. “Who’d you kill for that one?”

“Well, I tried to kill that rat Johnson, but he used some intern as a meat shield. Coward. Anyway, I convinced them that it was a one-off, that Boyd and Ives weren’t as docile as I’d expected them to be but we took care of it. If they pull another stunt like that we’ll have some problems, but so long as they behave…” Julian shrugs, overly and conspicuously nonchalant. His hands have stilled, however. “And then Vermaak walked in. I didn’t realize that little gremlin could even exist in fresh air, I’d thought being out of the funk of his lab would kill him, but apparently he does, in fact, still breathe oxygen.”

Rasher suppresses a shudder. Vermaak hadn’t been part of the team studying the maw, as from what Rasher’s been able to learn since then Vermaak is pharmacology rather than bioengineering, but he’d dropped in once in a while out of ghoulish curiosity, had looked at Rasher the way a child looks at a disgusting yet fascinating insect. Rasher has a distinct memory of the gleam of light on round glasses, visible even through the haze of horror and starvation. Vermaak had conducted a few experiments with drugs of some kind, and while none of the experiments worked Rasher still retains the memories of the drugged, foggy stupor they’d left him in and the agony when the drugs faded. The maw, until then quiet, rumbles faintly in reaction to Rasher’s remembered pain. Julian frees a hand from Rasher’s grasp and lightly rubs his knuckles along the maw. It lets out a tentacle for him to stroke, and Julian obliges. Rasher puts his head on Julian’s shoulder.

“What’d Vermaak want?” he asks.

Julian’s voice takes an edge of something Rasher can’t identify as he says, “To know how Ives healed so quickly.” Rasher turns his head so he can see Julian’s face. He looks annoyed, but under that there’s an edge of something that almost looks like satisfaction. He was right about something, Rasher realizes; something he suspected was confirmed, and even the knowledge that Vermaak was the one to confirm it can’t taint his sense of triumph. “Vermaak wasn’t invited, he never is, but he showed up halfway through and demanded to know how Ives recovered from an apparently broken arm within hours.”

“He _what_?” Startled, Rasher sits up straight. Sure, he’d noticed how quickly Seward’s bruises had faded after Jonesy’s beating, but some people just don’t bruise well. A compound fracture of both arm bones isn’t a bruise.

“According to Vermaak, that arm you broke isn’t so broken anymore. I _naturally_ didn’t have the _faintest_ idea what he was talking about and neither did anyone else, so someone pulled up the race footage.” Julian lifts an eyebrow, as if making the sarcasm in his voice clear. “Tell me, did cannibalism give you accelerated healing? Because Ives took the splint off minutes after the start of the race and his arm is fine. He even shoved a hitchhiker he’d bludgeoned to death into the engine.”

Rasher pulls a face. “Damn, all I ever got from cannibalism was the shits if I fucked up cooking it. How come those two got to be Superman?” Julian snorts and pats his cheek. “Take it you didn’t tell anyone at Heart about them when you recruited them.”

“Of course not. If I’d told anyone I’d managed to find monsters that predate the Scar, they’d have stolen them from me before the race even started. Throw all my plans into disarray.”

Rasher still isn’t positive Julian actually has plans for Seward and Renfield, or Boyd and Ives, or whoever the fuck they are. He’s been unusually cagey about details, when ordinarily Rasher is (has to be) the first to know about them. Rasher thinks Julian just wanted to make two other immortal monsters dance to his tune. Nevertheless, Julian isn’t usually the type to just wing things, so surely he has something in mind. 

“So what did you tell him?” he asks. “Are you making them someone else’s problem or are we keeping them?”

“Well, far be it from me to give Heart something it wants,” Julian replies loftily, nose in the air. “I told him I’d get back to him once I’d studied them a little. I have no intention of just handing them over.”

“So what’re you gonna do about it? If you don’t hand them over, Heart’ll probably come and take ‘em.”

Julian’s mouth turns down. “I don’t know yet,” he mutters. “Maybe try to get rid of them somehow, assuming I can pull them out without screwing up the show.”

It always comes back to the show. Rasher fights the distinct urge to roll his eyes. He’s all for just giving those two the old heave-ho, possibly into the Scar, and moving on without them, but he knows Julian would never go for that. Even if he’s only pretending to have plans for them, getting rid of them like that would be tantamount to giving up, and Julian never gives up on anything, not for real. Probably they’ll end up stuck with them, which’ll mean practically sitting on them just to keep them from misbehaving any more than they already have. Julian already said they’re planning some kind of retaliation against Rasher for Ives’ arm. That means actually surveilling them and putting bodyguards on Julian, because if they’re smart they’ll go after the one who can’t turn into a monster. Unless Heart decides they’re on Vermaak’s side and forces Julian into giving up Boyd and Ives, which means Julian’s going to pull some plan out of his ass to get them out of the race and out of Heart’s clutches… Rasher’s tired just thinking about all of it. He really wishes Julian hadn’t gotten them into the race. It’s all so unnecessary, surely having one people-eating monster around the place is enough.

He really doesn’t want to deal with it right now. He leans forward and puts his head on Julian’s shoulder. Everything’s so quiet right now, and he wants it to stay that way as long as possible. It’s the quiet of the calm before the storm, to be fair, but he’s long since learned to take peace where and when he can get it during the race. Right now, they’re coasting in that slender space that can only be found between setup and the party, a deep breath before a plunge, and tonight they’ve hit a sweet spot in terms of how long it lasts. If it’s too long or too short, anticipation and apprehension can ruin it, twist it tight as a wire and make it deeply uncomfortable. Too short, and there’s not enough time to think. Too long, and there’s too much time to think. Either makes Julian a queen bitch, which turns Rasher into an impossible brat, and everyone hates life for the next several hours.

But once in a while there’s a night when setup takes exactly as long as it should, and everyone just glides through the night as if they’re a well-oiled machine. It makes the roadies happy, which means they perform at their best, and that makes Rasher happy, because it means he doesn’t have to knock heads together just to get basic shit done, and that in turn makes Julian happy, because he hates when the messy necessities of his murdershow intrude on him in his rarefied heights of celebrity and mayhem.

And he stands a good chance of getting laid, which of course benefits Rasher’s mood, which also means the roadies don’t get yelled at. It’s a win-win situation for everyone, really. He wonders if he can talk Julian into fooling around; sometimes when he comes back from Heart all he wants is Rasher holding him, but other times…

“Everything’s ready for tonight,” Rasher says. “Nothin’ left to do but wait for the racers to come in.”

“Good.” 

Evidently Julian’s hoping to get laid too, because he hooks a finger in his shirt and tugs just so; buttons slip free one by one, his finger tracing a path down the center of his torso until he reaches the waistband of his trousers. It’s a slow tease, not quite a strip show but close, and Rasher slides his hands into Julian’s open shirt and kisses him. Julian rolls his shoulders so that his shirt falls away, leaving his body half-bare, and under the desire fanning to life in Rasher there’s a certain rage; he can see more of the bruises Aki left on him, worse than the ones under his chin and still purple and red. There’s a particularly vibrant one on the meat of his shoulder, red and blue and purple, yellow at the edges. He wants to bite it, as if he can tear away a part of Julian marked by someone else. Julian is his to mark. He growls a little and nips Julian’s neck. Julian’s breath hitches.

“Stop letting her mark you,” Rasher hisses. “She doesn’t have the right. You’re mine.”

“So you mark me instead,” Julian purrs breathily, hot against Rasher’s ear. He tilts his head, baring the length of his throat.

Rasher growls again and bites Julian just below his jaw, hard enough to make Julian gasp, before sucking a dark mark onto his skin. It’s painfully obvious, both in location and origin, and Rasher hopes it lasts until morning. He drags his teeth over the mark, then over Julian’s lower lip. He tongues the middle, where Julian always leaves a little cut as part of his look, then bites there too. This time Julian’s hands clench over Rasher’s bony hips and he lets himself fall back onto the bed, pulling Rasher with him. He pulls his shirt out of his waistband, then opens the last buttons so he can wriggle free of it and toss it aside. Rasher follows him down to nip each bruise blooming on his skin. The maw rumbles faintly, not quite a growl but certainly not a purr, as if reacting to Rasher’s possessiveness with its own; it goads Rasher to greater heights of the same. He reaches Julian’s trousers and tugs them open to pull them down and off.

It’s some consolation that Julian has never let Aki touch him sexually. Rasher has always welcomed touching a part of Julian that she hasn’t. He bites the swell of muscle at Julian’s hips, reveling in the way Julian groans and tugs his ponytail, delights in resisting Julian’s attempt to push his head down. In retaliation, Rasher reaches up and drags his nails over Julian’s chest, not hard enough to injure but enough to serve as a warning, making sure to catch the edges of his nipples. Julian arches with a little cry. Rasher briefly moves up to kiss him, curving his back to Julian’s touch like a cat as Julian smoothes his hands down along his spine. This time the maw does purr. A thick tentacle uncoils from within it and flops down atop Julian’s belly to slide between his legs. Rasher can taste his arousal as Julian rolls his hips against the tentacle, and he and the maw both sound at this, a moan and another purr respectively. A second tentacle lolls out, squirms up Julian’s chest to curl around his jaw and over his lips. Julian opens his mouth and sucks it the way he sucks Rasher’s dick.

Rasher’s too hard for this. He opens his jeans to pull himself out, and Julian immediately takes him in hand. He groans, thrusts into Julian’s palm, then leans down to press his cock into the hollow of Julian’s hip. Julian tries to keep stroking him, but Rasher directs the tentacle between his legs to slide between his cheeks and rub over his hole, and Julian moans around the tentacle in his mouth and arches. His hands clench in the sheets by his head. The tentacle pushes into him, twisting as it goes, and Julian actually whimpers, his hips rolling to meet it. He’s breathing hard through his nose, cheeks deeply flushed beneath his makeup, and suddenly Rasher wants to kiss him. The tentacle slides out of his mouth as Rasher moves up, one hand going to the back of Julian’s head, the other holding his cock against Julian’s hip as he ruts against him. 

Rasher can imagine how Julian looks, lips smeared with slime and his lipstick smudged, his chest heaving as he pants against Rasher’s cock rubbing his hip and the tentacle twisting in him, the way his muscles catch and flex as he moves; Rasher doesn’t need to see him. It’s a sight he’s seen many times. But in this case, familiarity will never breed contempt, and he breaks the kiss to lean back to look him over anyway. Julian is always gorgeous, but a part of Rasher finds him most gorgeous like this—a tentacle up his ass, skin glistening with sweat and tentacle slime, stripped bare of pretension so the desperation in his eyes is painfully clear. It’s heady and humbling in equal measure, that Julian would allow anyone to see him like this, raw with pleasure and affection.

It makes the bruises Aki left on him an even more painful sight. No matter that Rasher knows they’ll fade soon, knowing that someone else laid their hands on the man Rasher has claimed for his own is infuriating like nothing else. If Julian hadn’t forbidden him from tangling with Aki, Rasher would hunt down each one of her bodies and rip them all apart. He wouldn’t even eat her. He’d just shred her as punishment for daring to touch Julian. But Julian forbade him, not wanting to risk losing Rasher either to Aki herself or to Heart’s inevitable retaliation, and since Julian holds Rasher’s leash like no one else ever could, Rasher grudgingly contents himself with fantasies and leaving his own marks on Julian’s skin. He bends to bite the bruise on Julian’s shoulder hard just as the tentacle in Julian pulls out and twists back in, and Julian yells and jerks as he comes. Rasher reaches down and strokes himself until he comes over Julian’s belly, then flops bonelessly beside him. 

For a moment they simply lay there, panting. Then Julian rolls into Rasher’s arms, getting his hands around Rasher’s ass and kissing his neck. He leans back a little and touches the mark under his chin. Rasher placed it deliberately—not even Julian’s high collars will hide it. Julian clearly is aware of this from the way he gives Rasher a knowing look.

“Better?” he asks, voice wry under the roughness from having a tentacle down his throat.

“Better,” Rasher says, and kisses him.


	7. unwed henry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> however big a bastard you think slink is, i promise he's worse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't always write slink being as big a shit as he canonically is, but when i do, i have a blast. and also abuse italics, bc if ur not abusing italics when u write slink's dialogue, are u rly writing slink's dialogue? no, ur not.
> 
> content warnings: violence, murder, televised voyeurism

It’s Boyd who realizes there’s something different in the cheering when they make it to the finish line. Sure, Ives’ adoring little coterie is leading the way, and they seem to have acquired a handful of fans of Boyd himself, all of them cheering and congratulating them on another win and more kills, but he realizes there’s a cluster of men eyeballing them the way Ives eyeballs his intended prey. They aren’t looking at them the way Jonesy did, there’s no rage, there’s just—hunger. Ives doesn’t notice them; he’s more interested in the attention he receives as they weave through the crowd, accepting admiration like it’s his due. Boyd keeps his eye on them as he follows in Ives’ wake. He catches one ogling his ass and slips an arm around Ives’ waist. It’s worked at the previous parties, he and Ives are so clearly attached to each other that a silent reminder is enough to keep people at bay.

But rather than be dissuaded, the man just looks slightly excited. He nudges the man next to him, who spins to look around. He sees that Boyd has his arm around Ives’ waist and his eyes light up with what Boyd realizes is anticipation. 

Boyd leans close to Ives’ ear. “Something’s off,” he says.

Ives glances at him for a moment. “How so?” he asks.

“I’m not sure…”

Boyd looks around, trying to pin down what, exactly, is happening. Ives’ fan club is behaving as usual, fawning and cheering and reaching out to touch him like he’s the risen Christ, and some of them are reaching for Boyd the same way. But that crowd of men has started to follow them as well. They’re less inclined to look on Boyd and Ives reverently, and more than once Boyd feels their gaze roving over Ives and him. He’s starting to feel a bit like a piece of meat dangled in front of a pack of dogs.

Before long, someone makes the fatal mistake of slapping Ives’ ass.

Ives doesn’t say a word, he simply spins around and stabs the man in the throat.

“Hands to yourself,” he says in tones of poisoned honey over the man’s gurgled screams.

“So give us a show!” a different man calls.

“Excuse me?”

“Like in the Alfa!”

Ives goes absolutely still, as if suddenly turned to stone, and Boyd feels almost faint.

“Oh, no,” he half-whispers. “He didn’t—“

“Care to explain that little comment?” Ives says, and Boyd knows that tone, it makes his stomach twinge in sharp-edged memory. Ives’ hand is white-knuckled around his knife. He strides towards the speaker. “What, exactly, are you referring to?”

“Charles—“

The man Ives is stalking towards looks pale, his eyes wide; evidently he’s realized just how badly he’s screwed up. “Y-you know, in the… the Alfa when you… when he…?” 

For a moment, Boyd pities him, but only for a moment; the man obviously knew he’d just dug himself a grave, but rather than put the shovel down and climb out, he kept digging. Ives simply stares at him for a moment.

“And how do you know about that?” he asks. Boyd goes to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Charles,” he says in his ear. “ _The windshield cameras._ ”

Ives, frowning slightly, looks at Boyd. Then his eyes go wide.

“That fucking bastard,” he spits, lips skinning back from his teeth. For a moment Boyd sees in his eyes the same rage he’d seen in him at Fort Spencer, that same fury that had so nearly seen them both killed. Ives turns around and shoves through the crowd.

“Charles—Charles, wait—“

Ives ignores him. No one dares get in his way as he storms through the party in search of Slink. He continues to ignore Boyd trying to slow him down, even snarls at him when Boyd grabs his arm. Startled, Boyd lets go, and Ives immediately sets off again. Boyd can barely keep up. Some part of him wants to leave Ives to it, he doesn’t want to get caught in the fallout, but he knows if Ives really does try to kill Slink, Rasher will kill Ives. Boyd doesn’t think he’d be worth more than a meat shield if Rasher really wants to kill Ives, but he can’t just stand aside and let it happen. He’ll fight as hard and as long as he can to defend Ives.

Ives pushes through a crowd near the stage to find Slink holding court amidst a flock of his own groupies, mugging for their cameras and posing with them. Rasher is leaning against the stage, looking bored and completely uninterested in everything around him. Boyd suspects he’s perfectly aware of everything that’s happening, including the incoming Hurricane Ives.

“Slink!” Ives bellows. 

Slink glances over, then dismisses the crowd with a little flutter of his hand. He turns to face Ives, hands planted on his cane and a grin playing around his lips. 

“And what can I do for you?” he asks, sneering and smarmy. Boyd thinks he’s perfectly aware of why Ives is mad, and that he doesn’t care in the least. Rasher glances over, then fishes a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lights it. He still looks bored as he smokes, giving every indication that he’s checked out for the foreseeable future. Neither of them seem at all concerned that Ives is so mad.

“You fucking broadcast us having sex!“ Ives snarls. Slink just sniffs and shrugs.

“Of course I did,” he says. “Welcome to television. Sex sells, and you had sex where we could see it.”

Ives goes white. “How fucking dare you—“

“Let me remind you that you’re on my show,” Slink says, leaning forward. “I own you right now. Everything you do in front of a camera is fair game, and you’re almost always in front of a camera. Did you forget about the ones installed in your car? The ones tucked ever so neatly in the corners of the windshield? The passenger side camera had a lousy view once _Seward_ turned around, but the one on the driver side saw every second.” Boyd hears the faint emphasis he places on ‘Seward’ and realizes Slink knows it’s a false name. Boyd’s suspected as much, and as far as he’s concerned he’s just been proven right. If Slink knows that, what else does he know?

Ives, however, hasn’t noticed. “I ought to fucking kill—“

Rasher’s head turns towards them. “Want me to break more than your arm?” he asks conversationally. His pupils flash as he tilts his head. He pushes off the stage and stands at Slink’s right shoulder, cigarette dangling from his lip.

“Now, now.” Slink reaches back and pats Rasher’s cheek without looking. “I think this can and should be resolved without violence. After all, these two are the most popular racers on the show right now. It wouldn’t do to lose them. Even Heart likes them.”

Boyd stiffens, hearing the clear warning in the way Slink’s mentioned Heart, but Ives plows right past it.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your little television show,” he snarls, “how dare you use our intimacy—“

Slink busts out laughing. “Haven’t you seen _any_ of the other seasons? The second season was as close as we,” he flaps a hand at Rasher, “could get to a sex tape without putting a camera directly over the bed! I broadcast _my own_ sex life for the show! What makes you think I’d stick at broadcasting someone else’s? How many times do I have to say it? This is _reality TV,_ dipshit, everything is on camera and everything on camera can be used. There’s no such thing as privacy, and I don’t know the meaning of the word ‘scruples’. I have absolutely no qualms about showing anything I want if I think it’ll get ratings. If I get footage of you riding Seward like a rodeo clown on a show pony I’ll put it out there for the world to see, and no one will bat an eye about the morality of it. Oh, there might be a few tedious bastards like the late, unlamented Jonesy who bleat the same tiresome tripe about the sins of homosexuality, but do you know what everyone else will be saying?”

He steps closer to Ives, which Boyd thinks is a very bold move, Rasher or no Rasher. Slink is in range for a disemboweling, and as pissed off as Ives is, Boyd isn’t sure Slink’s going to walk away in one piece. Neither will Ives and Boyd, but Ives is a spiteful little bastard and he’ll judge certain death a risk worth taking if it means he gets to open Slink’s belly first. But if Slink is aware of that at all, he doesn’t care. Rasher’s evidently the one with self-preservation instincts, because his attention is moving back and forth between Boyd and Ives—Ives is the immediate threat, but he clearly knows that if he attacks Ives, he’ll have Boyd to deal with too.

“They’ll all say, ‘ _Ooo, that’s hot_ ’,” Slink says in a put-on Valley Girl voice. “‘ _Ooo, wish Renfield would fuck me like that! Ooo, loooove Seward’s titties! Seward-slash-Renfield OTP! Sooo hot! I’m drooling on my keyboard!_ ’ And then a string of little emoticons, mostly smileys and hearts and colon-P’s. If I had a computer, I’d show you right now. I’m quoting directly from the fan boards.”

Boyd can practically feel Ives seething. It’s like standing next to a bundle of dynamite and watching the lit fuse shrink.

“I don’t care how badly your panties get twisted because I showed your sex life to the world,” Slink says, seeming either oblivious to or dismissive of Ives’ rage. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat because ratings skyrocketed after you were decent enough to be _in-_ decent in front of a camera, because, again, _sex. Sells._ Honestly, you should be grateful since—”

Boyd almost doesn’t see Ives move. He feels a tug on his belt as Ives steals his knife, and then Ives is charging towards Slink. He moves too late to hold him back, all he does is snatch uselessly at Ives’ arm and barely manages to catch the back of his shirt—

He doesn’t see Rasher move at all. He blinks and Rasher’s got Ives pinned against the stage, one clawed hand on his throat and the other holding his wrist above his head. The knife falls from Ives’ hand to clatter on the ground. Boyd freezes. He can hear leather creaking, can see a weird flexing in the side panels of Rasher’s corset and he realizes that it’s from tentacles coming out of the mouth on his belly. Rasher’s body is as tense as a wire. He hasn’t even dropped the cigarette, he’s still got it between his left fore- and middle fingers, the cherry-end perilously close to Ives’ hair. Boyd can hear the same low growling as he’d heard in the fuel truck, but it’s deeper now, closer to the sound an alligator makes in warning. Ives is as frozen as Boyd, like a mouse pinned by a snake’s glare, and it’s a sight Boyd never thought he’d see.

“As I was saying,” Slink says, only sounding slightly miffed. “You should be grateful, since Heart knows you two killed Jonesy, and the fact that someone high up the corporate ladder thought you were hot is the only thing that spared you both. They think you’re more interesting in the race than out of it. If they wanted you gone, you would be, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.” For once something other than haughtiness comes into Slink’s voice. There’s a bitterness under his words, the clear reluctance of a prideful man made to bow to someone else. “Oh, and here’s something else for you to keep in mind, _Colonel Ives._ ”

Ives’ gaze snaps to Slink, confused as much as horrified. 

“Yes,” Slink says, “I know who you and _Captain John Boyd_ over there are. I know _what_ you are. I know how your arm healed so quickly after Rasher broke it. And Heart knows that your arm healed quickly, although they don’t know how. In fact, one of their favorite pet scientists wants to take you apart to see how you tick. He’s got all the professional ethics of a Nazi scientist in a concentration camp, as well as all the inventiveness. He created a mutant once by mixing a bunch of random chemicals in his lab together and injecting it into a human test subject, just because he wanted to see what happened. While you’re part of the race, he probably won’t touch you, since Corporate says he can’t, but there’s no guarantee of that. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to get his hands on you with or without Heart’s permission.”

Slink steps closer to Ives again. “But until and unless that happens, you’re part of my race, part of my show. Which, again, means I own your asses and everything you do with them in front of a camera. I, at least, have no interest in vivisecting either of you, so long as you pull in viewers and get me good ratings. Get too rowdy, however, and I’ll leave you to the less-than-tender mercies of Dr Vermaak and the other Heart scientists. Which means no attacking me, no attacking Rasher, and no attacking other racers.” Rasher’s head turns slightly, and Boyd catches him giving Slink a look. Slink sighs a little. “No attacking the roadies either, I suppose. Hitchhikers, desert marauders, and hapless bystanders are all fair game. Whatever you do in front of a camera, whether that’s murder, cannibalism, or each other is also fair game. Understand how this works now? No, no, don’t speak, just nod for yes, shake your head for no.”

For a moment Boyd thinks Ives won’t play ball. He’s giving Slink a mutinous glare, like he’s just waiting for Rasher to let him go so he can try to kill Slink again.

“Ives,” Boyd says, suddenly tired. “Ives, please.” He doesn’t want to do this anymore, he wants to just finish the race and get out, go back to his quiet life with Ives. Maybe in another country. If bowing to Slink is what it’ll take to achieve that, Boyd will bow and kiss his boots.

Ives turns a betrayed look on Boyd, but he must see something in Boyd’s eyes that changes his mind. He nods.

“Good. Glad we had this little chat.” Slink looks at Rasher. “Rasher, come.” He turns on his heel and starts to walk away.

Rasher releases Ives, who stumbles and nearly falls, and follows Slink. Neither he nor Slink give Boyd and Ives a single backward glance.


	8. sweet rosalie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uh oh sisters! no one in heart has any scruples!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: car accidents, violence, body horror of the accelerated healing variety

Boyd and Ives are barely awake during the next race—they snuck out of the party and spent much of the night out in the wilderness beyond. Boyd had thought they might talk about the race, about what Slink had done, what they’re going to do in the future; it was a perfect opportunity to plan and plot away from the cameras. But Ives didn’t say a word. He simply laid down in the dirt with his head in Boyd’s lap and stared into the distance. Boyd didn’t try to get him to talk, just rested one hand on Ives’ shoulder and petted him with the other. He felt bad for him; Ives’ ego had taken too many blows in too short a time, and his usual response was quite clearly denied to him. He couldn’t lash out at a man like Rasher, who could just step out of arm’s reach and kill him from a distance, and he couldn’t attack Slink, because Rasher stood in front of Slink. 

Ives doubtless felt helpless, and that was one thing Ives couldn’t stand. He’d become a monster in response to his helplessness in the face of the tuberculosis destroying his lungs, taken that ultimate step into inhumanity and immorality out of the terror of watching his body die around him and being unable to do anything about it. Though Ives had very carefully not construed it as such when he’d told Boyd about it, it was clearly an act of sheer desperation, the last act of a man convinced that it was his only choice if he wanted to live. (It was, certainly, since mid-nineteenth century medicine didn’t have a hope of curing tuberculosis, but that never did and never will excuse the monstrousness of it.) It wasn’t the last time he’d seen violence and murder as the only option available to him; he’d tried to kill Boyd for derailing his plans for Fort Spencer. He’d resort to it again and again afterwards. Boyd would even argue that at this point killing has become a kind of comfort or a coping mechanism to Ives since he’s used it to successfully get out of situations he can’t abide—it’s become his ultimate means of escape.

But now even his action of last resort, one which has served him well for almost two hundred years, the one thing he could count on always being able to do, is barred to him. He has no choice but to knuckle under to circumstances he finds abhorrent and cannot see a way out of. It was no wonder he shut down that night. Boyd knew nothing he could say would make it better, and so he kept quiet and kept petting Ives. They returned eventually, managing perhaps two or three hours of sleep between them.

This is perhaps why they don’t see the spike strip in the road until it’s too late. 

Out of a desire for the solitude of the open road Boyd, driving again, takes the route least likely to attract other racers. It’s meandering and long, likely the slower route. They don’t care this time about taking first; they just want distance from the race, even if only for a few hours. Neither man speaks at all. Ives once again rolls the window down and halfway leans out of it. Boyd’s attention is far more on Ives than the road. Boyd wants to talk, to try to figure a way out of this that doesn’t end in either of them dying or being sold to Heart, but he’s painfully aware of the cameras now. Everything he could say or do will be broadcast to Heart itself, let alone Slink, who has shown himself to be a greater manipulator than either he or Ives anticipated. 

He’s worried. He knows Ives isn’t talking because of the cameras, but he also knows that not talking will do more harm than good. They need to at least try to come up with some kind of survival plan, if not an out-and-out escape plan. They can’t keep doing this.

Maybe they could pull off the road somewhere so they can get out of and away from the car. An old rest stop, or one of the handful of abandoned farms they’ve passed. If they stop at one of the old farms, they could park the car and head into the house to talk. Possibly more; sex isn’t the best idea right now, but it would be a distraction, and Boyd has never known Ives to say no to a distraction when he’s stressed. And at any rate, even if they don’t manage to come up with any plans, Boyd wants to make him feel better, even if it’s just purely on the biochemical level of sex hormones. Serotonin’s a hell of a drug.

The more he thinks about it, the better an idea it sounds. If nothing else, they might be able to catch a quick nap. Boyd can barely focus on the road. He can see one of the farms just ahead, right off the road, five or six miles away. The rusting, collapsed hulk of an old oil well juts against the horizon from the backyard like broken bones, like the skeleton of some gargantuan prehistoric beast looming behind the house. Stopping sounds more and more appealing.

He opens his mouth to suggest this, but just as he does Ives sits bolt upright.

“Boyd, watch it!” he cries.

Boyd has no time to react to his words or the fact that Ives used his real name. He barely has time to see the glimmer of metal in the road just before the tires explode. The Alfa spins out of control. Boyd isn’t half the driver that Ives is; he has no chance of correcting. It spirals across the road, slams into what’s left of the guardrail, and rockets right through the rusting metal over the edge of a twenty-foot embankment. It nosedives into the dirt, slamming both of them forward. Boyd smashes into the steering wheel, the impact shattering his ribs, pulverizing his heart and lungs. The car bounces, and on the rebound Boyd smashes into the steering column again. The last thing he sees is the sickening spin of the ground and the sky as the car starts to roll down the embankment.

Everything goes black.

—

Charlie the roadie would not say, if asked, that she likes her job—she’s essentially the one-woman editing team for an entire television show, broadcast live to the mega-corporation that owns the entire country, and it’s more stress than any one person needs. But it’s the better of the roadie jobs, because it means she gets to sit in an air-conditioned trailer away from the fights, the cars, the engines, the corpses, the crowds, and more importantly the racers; some of them see a Black woman and decide she’s a target, even when she clearly works for the race and Rasher makes it clear that he’ll eat anyone who fucks with the roadies. So really in some ways, it’s pretty ideal. The only person she interacts with on a major basis is Rasher, and she knows Rasher. She doesn’t exactly _understand_ Rasher, because no one understands Rasher besides Slink, but she’s been the A/V woman since Rasher farmed the job out after season three so she’s at least _used_ to Rasher. Occasionally Slink comes around, but he doesn’t stay long and it’s mostly to make sure the cameras are set up to catch him in the best way onstage. For the most part, Charlie gets left alone to do her job and that’s the way she likes it, honestly. So no, she doesn’t like her job, but she definitely tolerates it. It’s been mostly kind to her.

Charlie’s time is spent in the A/V trailer, watching the monitors and making sure everything is being broadcast correctly. She trained for it once, back when regular news was still a thing and the news stations weren’t just extensions of Heart’s propaganda machine, and it’s not really any different now than it was then. The scenery is different when she emerges for food or a piss or whatever, but other than that, she could be in any mobile news van in the country. It’s better in some ways—she’s got a coffee maker in the trailer and a mini-fridge tiny even by the standards of the breed but still stocked, plus she gets free beer. She’s used to the blood and violence, desensitized now. It used to bother her, the indifference she’s developed to human suffering, but living in the modern world doesn’t encourage empathy. Care too much, and you’ll die of a broken heart before you’re thirty. Charlie is thirty-five.

Car crashes faze her even less than the murders. She’s seen plenty, and she’ll see plenty more so long as she keeps being the A/V woman for a balls-to-the-wall cross-country road race TV show. Therefore, when the black Alfa Romeo suddenly blows its tires out and goes into a catastrophic roll down an embankment, she scarcely blinks. It’s pretty spectacular, really, it does at least three rolls before coming to a halt on its roof and sliding the rest of the way down. The windshield cracks and shatters as it goes, and the passenger side camera goes dark. Charlie mumbles a swear, but at least the other one is still working. She can’t see much, there’s blood all over the lens. She’s still got a little sound, she can hear the wet choking and gurgling noises coming from the driver. 

For a few minutes, this is all she hears. Then that too goes silent, and Charlie mentally crosses out the Alfa Romeo on the list of racers. Shame, really, that Alfa was cherry. Probably totaled. The choppers will descend upon it soon like a horde of vultures with wrenches to extract the remains of the engine and what’s left of the driver and the passenger, who’ll probably wind up as fuel for someone else. Rest in pieces, so goes the circle of life.

Charlie turns off the broadcast feed as she normally does after someone wrecks and starts recording. She always keeps the feed back to her rolling so as to keep something of an eye on the choppers because Heart doesn’t trust them and Slink and Rasher both want proof of their innocence. Normally she tunes it out, just pays attention to the other racers, but something faint comes over the audio. She frowns a little and turns up the volume. It’s footsteps, someone’s walking up to the wreck. Several someones, she realizes. It’s not the choppers, they wouldn’t have gotten there so quickly, and there’s no record of any marauder gangs in that area. It’s too desolate even for them. Something’s up, something fucky. She wishes there wasn’t so much blood on the lens. It’s dripped away somewhat, enough that she can see that the steering column has crushed the driver’s rib cage like matchsticks, but Charlie still can’t see worth a damn. She can hear voices but she can’t make out any words.

A shadow passes by the driver side. This time, she can hear someone clearly:

“Shit, this guy’s toast. Vermaak wanted both of them.”

Someone else says, “The other one’s alive, but just. Told you the spike strip was too risky. How’d he almost lose his arm? Was it hanging out the window or something?”

“I dunno, who gives a flyin’…”

The voice fades out of comprehension as the speaker walks away. Charlie can’t see what happens next, but she hears the sound of breaking glass and the sound of a knife flicking open. There’s a moment of near-silence, and then the scrape of glass and a loud dragging noise. The footsteps recede, and then the only sound is the steady drip of blood.

For a moment Charlie can’t believe what she just witnessed. Someone deliberately made the Alfa wreck because they wanted the people in it, got the driver killed, and. Fucking kidnapped the passenger? Who in their right mind would bother? Who would want to? The fact that it happened at all suggests to Charlie that it was done by someone who knew the race would be passing through that area, and if they knew that, then surely they knew it was the Blood Drive. Who’d want to kidnap actual murderers? What was the point? It’s all more confusing than anything else. She rubs a hand over her close-cropped hair. 

Then Charlie realizes she has to tell someone, probably Rasher. Who, at this point, is likely in Slink’s trailer. Fuck. She doesn’t want to bother them. The last time someone bothered them, they got fed to an engine. Charlie has no desire to be fed to an engine. But they have to be told, they need to know that someone kidnapped a racer and killed another by assaulting their car. Slink’s gonna be pissed, assuming he didn’t engineer it somehow. Fuck. _Fuck_. She almost hopes Slink’s responsible for the crash, because if he isn’t that means someone’s fucking with the race. Rasher might not believe in shooting a messenger, but Slink does. Charlie’ll be lucky to get out of this without catching a knife in the throat.

 _Fuck_.

She shoves herself out of her chair and sticks her head out of the trailer, blinking in the bright sunlight. They’ve been stopped for several hours, so set-up’s basically finished. She doesn’t see Rasher in the immediate vicinity, and her heart sinks. She goes around the whole site, asking if anyone’s seen Rasher or Slink lately. To a one, they all point at Slink’s trailer and give her sympathetic looks. Absolutely no one wants to bother Slink and Rasher when they’re in Slink’s trailer. Charlie has no choice. Feeling a little like a condemned criminal on the way to Old Sparky, she makes her way to Slink’s trailer. She goes up the steps and pauses. She doesn’t hear anything from inside, which doesn’t mean much but she takes it as a good sign. Slink is loud. Charlie knocks on the door.

After a moment, Slink shouts, “Who dares approach?”

“It’s, er, it’s Charlie, Mr Slink,” Charlie calls. “A/V specialist? Uh, I gotta talk to you and Rasher.”

There’s a painfully silent moment. Charlie’s life flashes before her eyes. Then—

“Enter.”

Charlie pushes the door open. She very carefully does not look around, she knows enough about Slink to also know that whatever she sees in his personal space, she won’t like. It’s dim with the curtains all drawn and only the light over the bed on, enough that she can’t quite see details. She can see Slink and Rasher in bed; Rasher’s propped himself up against the wall and Slink is lying between his legs. Whatever they were doing, they must’ve finished; they’re both clearly naked, but if they’d still been screwing when she knocked she’d probably be dead by now. She notices that Slink is very well-built and mentally congratulates Rasher.

“I just saw the Alfa Romeo get wrecked and the passenger get dragged out alive,” Charlie says. “Driver looked dead.”

“What?!” Slink’s bellow is almost loud enough to rattle the windows. He sits bolt-upright, the sheet sliding dangerously low, and Charlie quickly looks at the ceiling. 

“Tires blew out and it rolled down an embankment,” she says, carefully not looking anywhere near him. “When it stopped, some men went up to it and checked the driver and the passenger. The driver’s chest was caved in, so they gave him up for dead and dragged out the passenger. They mentioned the name Vermaak, but I don’t know who or what that—“

“Fuck!” 

Charlie hears the covers being flung aside and covers her eyes, muttering, “Oh, lord.” There’s the sound of rustling cloth, a muffled swear from Rasher, and then hands on her wrist, pulling her hand away from her eyes. Tentatively she looks to see a partially-dressed Slink standing before her, looking livid. His shirt’s open, but at least he’s wearing pants. Rasher joins him, buttoning his jeans. A couple inches of tentacle stick out of his maw like a cat that forgot to pull its tongue in after licking itself, and Charlie has to fight back the mad urge to laugh.

“Show us the footage,” Slink growls.

—

It’s not the worst accident Rasher’s ever seen, but it’s pretty bad. Even knowing Ives could heal a broken arm in hours, he doubts Boyd’s going to survive having his chest caved in. 

After seeing the footage, Julian had insisted the two of them ride out to the crash site with the choppers. It’s like he wants to be personally certain Boyd’s dead. He’d watched the footage with an inscrutable expression on his face, Charlie taking refuge in the far corner, and then swept out of the A/V trailer without a word. He’d grabbed Rasher by the collar on the way out, leaving him no time to give any response or instructions to Charlie. He knew she’d at least radio the choppers; that was standard practice and while everything else might be non-standard, the choppers still had to go in and retrieve the engine. Julian stopped by his trailer barely long enough to dress properly, and then dragged Rasher over to the choppers. They were surprised to see Julian and Rasher coming towards them as they made ready to leave, but knew better than to question it when Julian climbed into the cab of the lead pickup. Rasher hopped into the bed.

“What’s going on?” one of the choppers asked as she settled next to him, a big butch woman with arms as big around as Rasher’s thighs. “We know something’s up, Charlie sounded rattled when she walkie’d us.”

Rasher just shook his head. “Beats me. Slink wanted us along, though, so here we are.”

It’s obvious what caused the wreck when they arrive—they’ve encountered enough marauders to know what it looks like when a car hits a spike strip at speed. Shreds of the Alfa’s tires are scattered across the road, itself decorated with skid marks that careen wildly from side to side before swinging off over the embankment. The corroded guard rail is bent and twisted, snapped well in two. Boyd and Ives must’ve been going fast. The choppers all pull over to the shoulder behind the lead truck, and Julian wastes no time in getting out and heading down the embankment. Rasher cusses and vaults out of the bed to go after him. Julian slides more than walks down the embankment; his boots aren’t made for any terrain rougher than a gravel parking lot and they have no grip. Rasher fares a little better.

The Alfa is lying on its roof like a flipped beetle, a sad vestige of its former glory, ringed with the footprints of Vermaak’s goon squad. All the windows are crazed and smashed, the shattered windshield spattered with blood. Rasher crouches down to look through the driver’s side window, and he sees Boyd in the driver seat, hanging lifeless in the grip of his seatbelt. Rasher joins Julian on the other side. The passenger window is gone, smashed out, with clear drag marks and heavy smears of blood leading away from the window where Ives was dragged out and away. The tracks disappear close to the car, so whoever had pulled him out had evidently picked him up and carried him off. There are no tire tracks down here, so the goon squad had parked above. They must’ve missed them by just a few hours. Julian stares down at the glass glittering in the dirt with the same disgusted, disappointed expression he’d worn while staring at Jonesy’s wrecked Mustang. Rasher lays a hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he says. 

Julian just makes a grumbling noise. He looks up at the choppers and gestures to them. One by one, they come down the embankment.

Later, Rasher would realize that had he not seen it firsthand, he’d never have believed what happened next.

The choppers get the Alfa back onto its wheels. Rasher, sitting next to Julian on the embankment, sees Boyd’s head loll grotesquely. His neck looks broken, the way his head is swinging. Rasher frowns a little. Rigor mortis ought to be setting in, he’s been dead for a few hours now. Sure, it takes almost a day for a corpse to stiffen entirely, but still, his head shouldn’t move like that. Maybe it’s to do with whatever he is, maybe the processes of death are slowed. Meanwhile, the choppers are getting the door open and cutting Boyd’s seatbelt so they can drag his corpse out of their way. They lay him on the ground some feet from the car.

At this point Julian gets up and goes over. He crouches down and glares at Boyd’s body as if affronted Boyd had the audacity to die, and for probably the thousandth time Rasher wonders what Julian had wanted with them. All they’d been so far was a pain in the ass. Rasher goes to stand beside Julian. He looks down at Boyd. The damage to Boyd’s chest is considerable. His entire chest cavity is little better than an impact crater, lungs and heart nothing more than chunks of bloodied meat and shattered bone. So much for airbags. Then Rasher sees something shift in Julian’s expression. He touches the side of Boyd’s bloodied neck. He yanks his hand back as if it’s been burned.

“Rasher,” he says slowly. “Check for a pulse.”

Rasher stares at him. “Excuse me?”

“Do it.”

Rasher continues staring at him, then decides fuck it. He tucks two fingers just under Boyd’s jaw. For a moment he doesn’t feel anything, then—a faint flutter, barely discernible, almost more a concept of a heartbeat than an actual pulse. “Holy shit—“

“I knew it!” Julian shoots back up like a spring. His eyes are gleaming. “We’ve got to get him back to the race, he’s _still alive!_ ”

He’s more than alive, he’s actually healing before their eyes—his lungs have started to reinflate, pushing out shards of bone with enough force to eject them straight out of his ruined chest cavity. As soon as his organs are intact again his rib bones begin filling in the gaps, marrow and cartilage and compact bone crawling towards each other like creeping mold. The choppers come over, and several of them immediately turn away, retching. The rest can only watch in horrified fascination. As soon as the bones have finished, new muscle and skin fills in where it had been pulverized. It’s like watching decay in reverse. Even Rasher is astounded, and he transforms into a monster on a regular basis. It’s nothing like the way Julian heals; if the wound is bad enough, Julian is incapacitated for hours with a raging fever. Watching him is really rather incredible. But there’s something about it which makes Boyd’s healing horrific, rather than impressive. It’s so fast, so complete; there’s no sign that he’s enduring what Julian endures, and that shouldn’t be possible. Bodies just don’t work that way. Julian is staring at Boyd with an expression of malicious hunger and delight, Rasher realizes, and for a moment he wonders why.

Then Boyd’s eyes open briefly. One is hemorrhaged, the sclera flooded with blood, but it disappears like water down a drain in seconds. He sucks in a terrible gasping breath that arches his body right off the dirt, and almost instantly coughs it out in a wave of racking, bronchial coughs that send chunks of tissue and strings of blood flying from his mouth. He lies there gasping like a landed fish, his breath sounding horrible and ragged, eyes closed, and Rasher can’t help but think of one of his bad transformations, the ones that destroy his body and turn him into an uncontrollable pile of constantly changing mutations and mutilations for hours. For a moment no one says anything.

“Holy shit,” someone says.

Boyd’s eyes roll behind his closed lids, and then open. He looks around, the bones in his neck grinding audibly enough that even Rasher, whose hearing has been pretty well wrecked by so many years near speakers and amps, can hear the sound.

“Ives?” Boyd croaks. “Where’s…”

He tries to get up, but his arms give out and he collapses back to the dirt. He makes a quiet sound like an aborted word. Then his eyelids flutter, his eyes roll back, and he passes out.

For a moment, no one speaks. Then one of the choppers, a small man holding a socket wrench like it’s a baseball bat, lets out a very heartfelt, “What the fuck.”

“Someone get him into the bed of a truck,” Julian says. “Rasher and I are taking him back to the race. Bring their effects.”

Rasher looks sidelong at Julian. “Why?” he asks. “Ives is gone, which means we have nothing to hold over him anymore. He’s already been eliminated as a racer, Heart thinks he died in the wreck. His car is totaled. Right?” He looks at the choppers, who as one look at the Alfa and nod. “There’s nothing else we can do with him. Cut him loose.”

Julian just shakes his head and gestures to one of the choppers. The chopper glances at Rasher, who eyes Julian for a moment. He sighs and looks back at the chopper. He nods. The chopper slings Boyd up into a fireman’s lift and follows Rasher and Julian back up the embankment. Boyd is laid out in the bed, and after a moment’s consideration Rasher gets up with him. He badly wants to talk to Julian about all of this, maybe finally winkle out the real reason for Julian’s interest in Boyd and Ives, but he knows Julian won’t talk. He’ll grill him later. For now, he’ll just make sure Boyd doesn’t bounce out of the truck bed. A second chopper trudges up the embankment, carrying two duffels and a large cooler. The duffels and the cooler are remarkably undamaged. The chopper sets them in the bed, and Rasher arranges them enough to brace Boyd’s body. Julian starts the truck.

Halfway back to the race, the sliding window in the back of the truck opens.

“Rasher,” Julian calls. 

Rasher, who’d been half-mesmerized by the passing scenery, turns his head slightly. “Yeah?”

“Stay with him until he wakes up. Then tell him the deal’s off and he’s free to go.”

That’s surprising. “Really?”

“Without Ives, he’s useless, and Heart likely thinks he’s dead now anyway. He’s free to go.”

“Huh.” Rasher turns to look at Julian more fully, but all he sees is the back of Julian’s head, and Julian has shut the window. Rasher sighs.

What a clusterfuck.


	9. the cry of the banished horseman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> immortality sucks when you lose the ones you care about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: medical horror

In their tent, Boyd comes back to awareness slowly, agonizingly; his head and his chest ache, a dull pounding throb with every heartbeat and every breath. It’s the bear trap all over again. Or, more aptly, August 1864 in the Shenandoah valley again; he’d been unlucky enough to have been in a house that got hit by cannon fire, and shrapnel nearly obliterated his entire abdomen. When he came to, his flesh and nerves crawling with fire as his body tried to repair itself, Ives was there waiting for him, perched atop a corpse that was clearly intended to be a ready supply of flesh to restore Boyd’s. (He still remembers how startled he’d been to see worry in Ives’ eyes; their night in Gettysburg wouldn’t come for another few years, and up until Gettysburg Boyd had thought Ives just tolerated him.) 

But this time, there’s no Ives. There’s only Rasher, sitting in a lawn chair as far as he possibly can from Boyd, reading _Helter Skelter_. He’s got his maw on full display. There’s a cooler on his left side that Boyd recognizes as his and Ives’, the same one that had been in the car. It’s scuffed along one corner but otherwise undamaged. Rasher glances up as he turns a page, dog-ears it when he sees Boyd’s awake and sets the book aside. He leans over and pulls a thermos out of the cooler. 

“Think fast,” he says before tossing the thermos to Boyd. “Slink told me about you two right at the start. I didn’t believe him, but you came back from having your chest collapsed. Guess I gotta believe him now. Heart thinks you’re a dead man, though. Congrats.”

The thermos sloshes when Boyd catches it. He unscrews the lid and the thick scent of blood wafts out. His stomach clenches painfully, hunger and need spiking hard. He doesn’t think, just lifts the thermos to his lips. In the moments it takes him to drain the thermos to the last drop, all he can focus on is the blessed relief the blood brings him; he can feel warmth rolling through his body, soothing the ache in his chest as it goes. He doesn’t even stop to breathe. Once he finishes, he lowers the thermos and looks hard at Rasher.

“Where’s Ives?” he asks. No point in maintaining pseudonyms now, he figures.

Rasher’s gaze is impassive. “Heart got him. Sorry.”

The wind leaves Boyd’s lungs as surely as if Rasher had struck him in the stomach. He’s heard what happens to those unfortunate few taken by Heart; he’s heard the roadies talk, he’s heard rumors from his patients. He’s well aware that if Heart has Ives, Boyd may never see him again. The knowledge poisons him, threatens to burn him from the inside out, a Chernobyl glow in his head. That crashing realization wrenches an agonized sound from him, an animal cry he scarcely recognizes as his own voice. He’s had Ives at his side for a century and a half, a constant presence in his life, snark and charm and occasionally real affection, and to be without him is like being without a limb. He feels torn asunder. He can’t go on without him; he’s incomplete without Ives. A hundred and fifty years of life together has tied them in ways not easily broken. No matter the emotions between them, Boyd would still rather face life with Ives than without him; he needs the unique understanding Ives shares with him, those shared memories, the singular relationship that results from knowing someone for two lifetimes. Without him, without the presence of the one man Boyd could reasonably expect to live as long as he does, the future is too painfully lonely to contemplate.

Ives is more than a crutch. A crutch provides necessary support, but the loss of it doesn’t necessarily kill. Take Ives away from Boyd, and Boyd will die. He can’t go on alone, he can’t be a monster by himself. 

Rasher eyes Boyd without speaking, a silent presence that offers neither pressure nor support. He does not return to his book, just sits somewhat sprawled in the chair, hands linked over his chest. His eyes are dark in his deep sockets, expression inscrutable. Then—

“You’re under no obligation to finish the race alone,” Rasher says. Boyd looks at him. “Slink wanted me to pass that along. You were entered with Ives, the deal was for both of you to run the race. Without him, that’s null and void.” He shrugs. “Also you’re technically dead. You’re free to go wherever you want. No one’ll chase you.”

“Is Ives dead?” Boyd asks, as if Rasher hadn’t spoken.

Rasher shrugs. “Probably not. We think Abel Vermaak, one of their scientists, caused the wreck to get to you two. If he thought Ives was alive when he got to your crash, he’s likely kept him that way. Can’t learn shit from a corpse.”

“Then I’m going to get him back,” Boyd says. He’s scarcely thought of the idea; it came to him almost as he spoke it aloud. Even so, he’s dead certain it’s the only course of action available to him. He has to try to get Ives back. He has to.

The light catches in Rasher’s eyes as he tilts his head. “Oh yeah?”

“Ives made me a monster, but he knows me as a man. I can still _be_ a man around him. I need him.”

Something shifts in Rasher’s expression. It doesn’t soften, exactly, but some sympathy or understanding breaks clear in his eyes. “Hmm.” He stands. “Don’t leave without me. If you’re hungry, there’s meat in the cooler.” He heads for the tent flap. Boyd gapes at him.

“Wait—you’re going to help—I thought you hated us!”

“Nah, I don’t hate you. Never did. I don’t really feel anything for you two.” Rasher looks over his shoulder. “You were just causing problems for Slink, and problems for him are problems for me.” He turns just enough that Boyd can see the red curve of his ribs. “Thing is, you’re not the only monster who needs his man around here.”

With that he ducks out of the tent.

—

Rasher has a sneaking suspicion that what he’s agreed to is going to hurt. Oh, certainly it’s going to hurt Vermaak and wherever he’s keeping Ives; he suspects a lot of hapless security drones are going to be eaten. He looks forward to the carnage, he hasn’t had a good rampage in a while and he’s feeling bloodthirsty. No, he knows it’s going to hurt _himself_ , to go back and essentially come face-to-face with what he went through as a lab rat. Doubtless whatever Vermaak has in mind for Ives will be far different from whatever it was that Heart wanted with Rasher, but while the specifics will be different, the circumstances will be the same: someone taken against their will to be a subject of inhumane experiments carried out by a man with no more scruples than Josef Mengele. Rasher never dealt with those days, those memories—in the immediate aftermath he had more important things to worry about, such as keeping the maw under control (and how spectacularly _that_ failed) and keeping himself under control (which failed almost as spectacularly, albeit more privately). He just buried them in as deep a grave as he could dig, tossed the shovel aside, and walked away.

A rampage will probably be good for him, come to think of it.

He’s given a very wide berth as he strides through the party; he hasn’t put his corset back on, or his jacket. He’s not sure which is more unsettling to people: the frankly agonizing angles of his body or the maw and its effects on him. The latter goes deeper than the creeping spread of black across his torso or his red ribs or even the maw itself. Scars and stretch marks stripe his back and flanks and arms, and anyone who’s seen him transform knows what they’re from. He’s got a particularly nasty scar above his cervical vertebra, where it pierces his skin every time it stretches in a transformation. But it’s more than the marks on his skin or the maw on his belly; it’s in his eyes, and not merely the way they flash when the light hits them. He’s seen how people look at him when they catch his gaze, seen the exact moment that their lizard brains recognize they’re not looking at a human anymore. They know he’s a monster, and they know he’s a predator, even the ones who think he’s prey at first like Boyd and Ives did. He sees it in everyone he meets.

Everyone but Julian, that is. Julian still sees who he was, not what he is; the man beneath the monster. He knew Rasher before the maw, and to Julian’s mind Rasher’s still that man, just with a few new and interesting appendages. Rasher more than understands how Boyd needs Ives for that acknowledgment, because he needs Julian for the same reason. For that, if no other reason, Rasher’s going to help Boyd get Ives back.

After several minutes he finds Julian by the stage, surrounded by the latest gaggle of starstruck ducklings begging for his regard. He groans; Julian hates being pulled away when he’s playing celebrity. It’s unavoidable, though—he needs to ask Julian where Vermaak might have taken Ives, and he’s not doing that in front of fans.

“Julian,” Rasher calls as he approaches. “Need a word.”

Julian must see something in his eyes, because for once he doesn’t argue, just extracts himself from his fans and follows Rasher into the shadows of backstage. Once there he turns and lifts an eyebrow at Rasher.

“If you were Vermaak and had just kidnapped a supernatural monster for dubious science reasons, where would you hide him?” Rasher asks. Julian’s other eyebrow rises.

“Are you planning something?” he asks, rather than answer.

“Boyd wants Ives back, and I’m going to help him.”

Julian crosses his arms. “Really.”

“Really, really.”

“Why.”

Rasher tilts his head. He feels the way light hits his eyes and makes them flash—it always stings a little. “Because I’ve been where Ives is.” _And no one came for me,_ he thinks but does not say.

Julian hears his thought anyway. He doesn’t flinch, exactly, but Rasher sees the way the skin around his eyes tightens. He lets out a sigh. “I lost track of Vermaak after what happened at Meadeville,” he says, “since I started focusing on the race more after that and he stayed in pharmacology, so all I can do is guess.”

“Better than nothing.”

“I think there are two options. Option one, he was operating without Heart’s permission and since Heart doesn’t like its pet monkeys getting out of their cages, he’ll have put him somewhere halfway secret, likely not far from the crash site. Option two, he did everything with Heart’s blessing and has him in a Heart lab, in which case Boyd’s not getting him back.”

“ _I_ came back.”

“Ives isn’t you.” Julian puts his back to Rasher. “If I tell you to leave Ives to his fate and toss Boyd into the Scar and leave, would you listen?”

Rasher paces around in front of him and uses every additional inch he has on Julian to loom over him. He lets a tentacle out, puts it under Julian’s chin and tilts his head back. After catching and holding Julian’s gaze for an uncomfortably long moment, he shakes his head.

“Of course not,” Julian huffs. “You never listen, not when your mind’s made up about something.”

“And you wouldn’t have me any other way.” Rasher pushes Julian’s hat back to kiss his forehead. “Besides, we might be making Heart mad by stealing something from their favorite scientist.”

“Why do you think I haven’t actually tried to forbid this little escapade?”

Rasher laughs and kisses him again, this time on his lips. “Can I have the keys?”

Julian reaches into his belt pouch and extracts the Gremlin’s keys. “Bring it back with a full tank.”

“Sure. Think you can wrangle the roadies on your own for a couple days?”

“How hard can it be?” Julian’s tone is blithely ignorant and Rasher snorts.

“I’m gonna remind you that you said that.” He kisses Julian’s cheek. “Bye, Julian.”

On his way back to Boyd, Rasher stops by his trailer. He doesn’t want to wear his corset for this; he wants something he can easily remove, and while he’s gotten fairly adept at removing the corset it still takes longer than he’s comfortable with for an operation like this. He shrugs on one of his old button-downs. He’s always surprised by how baggy they are these days, even though they never fit right; he’s always been too skinny for shirts that accommodate his height and too tall for ones that accommodate his build, but he lost what little weight he had to spare in the lab and never gained it back. He doesn’t look in the mirror as he leaves his trailer. His corset and jacket are tucked under his arm.

Boyd is sitting where he left him, knees drawn up to his chest. His eyes are red, like he’s been crying. Rasher almost thinks he otherwise hasn’t moved, but the lid is off the cooler and it’s now empty. The various minor bumps and bruises that had littered his face and arms are gone. He jumps when Rasher jingles the keys at him.

“Get your shit and come on,” Rasher says, pointing to the duffel bags. “I’m driving.” 

Boyd unfolds himself, grabs the duffels, and follows.

The desert is ink-black and silent as a grave, the only sounds the engine and the tires on the cracked asphalt and the wind rushing through the car’s open windows. Stars stud the sky like diamonds on a jeweler’s black velvet, the moon limning the desert in thin silver. Boyd doesn’t speak, and Rasher can’t tell if it’s natural inclination or if he’s too wrapped up in his pain. He isn’t sleeping. Inclination, maybe; he always has been the one in the shadows. Ives talks enough for both of them. Rasher’s fine with it, he hates chatter when he’s driving. It surprises him as much as it startles Boyd, therefore, when Rasher’s the one to break the silence:

“Do you love him?”

Boyd glances over at Rasher. Rasher never has been a romantic man, he doesn’t really care if that’s why Boyd wants to rescue Ives. All evidence so far points to enough affection that Boyd’s willing to risk himself to rescue Ives from Heart, but there may be other factors at play. Rasher doesn’t really care, he’s happy just to be given the opportunity to put Heart’s nose out of joint over something. But he’s curious nonetheless. Boyd sighs and looks out the window.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. Rasher knows a non-answer when he hears one, but he doesn’t know if Boyd is truly unsure of his feelings, or if Boyd doesn’t want to admit his feelings one way or the other.

“Seems like you’re going to a lot of trouble for him if it doesn’t matter,” Rasher says.

“It’s not about love.” Boyd’s gaze is fixed on the road. “Well, it’s… no. It’s not about love.”

Rasher tilts his head. Denial’s clearly more than a river in Egypt here, but he’ll let it lie. “Really.”

“It’s…” Boyd huffs and falls silent. He looks sidelong at Rasher. “How old do I look?”

“I dunno, mid-thirties?”

“I’m almost two hundred. I was born in 1812, in the mountains of what’s now West Virginia. It was just Virginia then.” He snorts. “Guess that makes me a proto-hillbilly. My father left to go fight in the War of 1812. He died in 1813 during a British raid on some podunk little town in Maryland on the Susquehanna River, I forget the name. You’d think I’d remember where my father died, but I never knew him and it’s been almost two hundred years. I’ve forgotten much more than that.”

Rasher lets that knowledge sit in his mind for a moment. He knew Boyd and Ives had to be old; their military records go back to the Mexican-American War. Julian had shown him the files he’d found. Rasher still hadn’t quite believed it—John Boyd isn’t that unique a name, for instance, and there were no visual records of either of them beyond rudimentary descriptions and hair and eye color. It was more likely, Rasher had thought, that Julian had just found two men who more or less matched the descriptions and had the same names. It was unlikely, but he’d thought it more unlikely that Julian had actually managed to find two men who’d been alive for almost two centuries. Fuck. Rasher can’t fathom being alive that long. He’s amazed some days he made it to thirty. He’ll be amazed if he makes it to thirty-five, the way the world works. He still half-expects the maw to eat him alive from the inside out someday, and sooner rather than later.

“I met Ives in 1847, when I was assigned to Fort Spencer out in the Sierras,” Boyd continues. “He made me a monster, and I tried to kill us both for it. It didn’t take. Somehow we both survived, and he dragged us out and kept me alive. I think it was spite at first, but after a while… well. We’ve been together ever since. We first had sex in… 1867? 1868? A few years after the Civil War, anyway. He’s the only man alive who knows who I was, not just who I am.” 

He looks at Rasher again. “Imagine the intimacy of knowing someone for a century and a half, regardless of the nature of your relationship. How much you would come to rely on them, since they’re the only person in the world with whom you could truly share existence. And Ives isn’t just some passing acquaintance who stuck around for good. What happened between us at the fort, it bound us together. You don’t go through something like that with another person without being tied to them forever afterward, even if one of you doesn’t survive. And he… he changed me so much. You wouldn’t recognize the man I was. No one today would, except Ives. He remembers that man. He was the catalyst, the agent of change for me, but he’s also the record of that change. I need him around because he knows all of me, not just some of me.

“I’m already almost two hundred years old, and it’s not impossible that I could live another two hundred. Ives is the only other man in the world who can say the same. I need him for that, if nothing else. I can’t describe how lonely it would be to watch everyone around me grow old and die, while I alone stay the same. I couldn’t bear it without Ives. Are we lovers? Yes. Would I want him back even if we weren’t? Yes.” 

He drums his fingers on the windowsill. “I thought at first I could… rein him in. Keep him from being too much a monster. And maybe I did, I don’t know. But eventually… he started to matter to me. I started to need him. I want to think he needs me too; he must, since surely he’d have gotten rid of me a long time ago if he didn’t. He could have, he’s had plenty of opportunities through the years. He didn’t and hasn’t.” His hands curl into fists. “I can’t live without him. I can’t handle that loneliness.” He sounds as if he’s talking to himself more than Rasher.

Then he falls silent again. Rasher keeps his gaze away from him; he feels like he’s intruding on something, being here with him. Just as he can’t imagine living as long as Boyd has, neither can he imagine the sheer depth of Boyd’s relationship with Ives. Even in an ideal world, even in a _normal_ world, Rasher would probably get at best fifty or sixty years with Julian. Sooner or later, one of them _will_ die for good, probably Rasher since he’s not the one capable of resurrection. To be in a relationship that might _literally_ last forever… worse, to know that if one’s lost somehow, that the other’s grief would have to be carried forever… Rasher almost shudders. It’s not a pleasant thought. He’s all too familiar with the grief of losing a lover, he knows it every time Julian dies, in those agonizing seconds or minutes it takes him to come back, but it’s always temporary; Julian always comes back. Ives doesn’t have that ability—if Boyd loses him, he loses him for good. An infinite life just means the possibility of infinite pain. And Boyd and Ives’ relationship is more than complicated. They’re lovers now, but by the sound of it they’ve been enemies. Probably they’ve been friends. That much history, that much emotion; no wonder Boyd can’t live without him. 

He really wants to hug Julian.

They reach the crash site. Rasher pulls over to the side of the road, and both of them get out. The tire shreds still sit in forlorn curls on the gravel shoulder. The corpse of the Alfa Romeo is long gone, hauled away by the choppers. Boyd goes and stares at the tire shreds. Rasher stretches his back, making the maw grumble.

“Come on, wakey-wakey,” he says to it. He unbuttons his shirt so it hangs open. The maw grumbles again, this time giving him a sense of curiosity. It knows he wants something. He lets a tentacle out, tasting the air; the traces are faint, but he gets burning rubber, the hot metal and roadkill smell-taste of blood engines, and blood on its own. It’s Ives’, he thinks; it seems familiar. What he doesn’t get, which is the most important thing, is the copper, ozone, and petrichor smell of a portal. Vermaak didn’t have Ives taken to Heart headquarters. Julian was right, he’s taken him somewhere else.

“Good news, bad news time,” he calls to Boyd. “Which do you want?”

Boyd looks over at him. “Surprise me.”

“Good news, Vermaak didn’t have Ives taken to HQ. Bad news is that doesn’t tell me where he is.”

Boyd’s eyes look dead. “Can you find him?”

“Well, there’s only this road. If we stay on it, it might take us to him. Might not.” Rasher shrugs. “He’s your boyfriend. Do you wanna follow it now and risk it being the wrong way, or go back and see if Julian can dig something out of the Heart system?”

Boyd looks down the road. It disappears over the horizon, giving no clue what lies at its end. He starts for the car.

“Get in,” he tells Rasher.

They follow the road.

—

Ives wakes and almost wishes he hadn’t. He’s facedown on an operating table, secured in four-point restraints. From the pain in his shoulder and the way the skin of his arm itches like fire, he’s healing, but he’s healing slowly, and the position he’s in isn’t helping. He’s stripped to the waist; he can feel the cold metal table against his chest. The light in the room is blindingly bright, making his eyes water. He remembers the accident, the nauseating spin of the Alfa Romeo as it rolled down the embankment, the hot spatter of Boyd’s blood against his face as the steering column crumpled right into Boyd’s chest and snapped his ribs and sternum like so many twigs—and then nothing. No—there’s a brief moment, a blurry memory of coming to upside down in the seat, to see a pair of combat boots come into view through the cracked windscreen. The boots go around to the side, and the window smashes in. Ives can’t turn his head, so he can’t see what happens next. But he remembers the pinprick in the side of his neck and the sick waves that rolled over him and dragged him back down into a woolen darkness.

He pulls against the straps, ignoring the way it makes his shoulder and arm scream in agony, but they’re cinched tight. He can’t get any leverage from his torso. Whoever has him, they’ve got him good. They must think he’s dangerous. Who has him, then? It isn’t Slink, he suspects; Slink wouldn’t engineer an accident just to kidnap him. That isn’t good television. Or is it? Slink doesn’t like him or Boyd, he might…

Boyd. Where’s Boyd? Ives can’t see him in front of him. He manages to get his head turned around, though it makes his neck hurt almost as badly as his shoulder, and he isn’t on his other side either. If Boyd’s there, he’s out of sight. He can’t hear him, which means either he’s dead and/or not breathing, or Ives is alone.

“Boyd?” he croaks. There’s no response. He tries again, manages to project his voice a little more. “Boyd?”

There’s no reply, though he hears a door open somewhere. He tries to look around, but he could be in any one of any number of operating rooms in any hospital in the country. There’s nothing to see; institutional aqua walls, tile floor, a stainless steel countertop and sink off to the side. The door opens and footsteps sound to his left, and he turns his head to see a middle-aged man in round glasses and a lab coat coming towards him.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ives spits.

The man doesn’t answer. He produces a small tape recorder from the breast pocket of his lab coat and clicks it on. “It is 9:24 AM and the subject is awake,” he says into it. His accent is Dutch or German, Ives thinks. “The drugs wore off a little ahead of schedule, perhaps due to the subject’s metabolism. His injuries have already largely healed; as a matter of fact, his left arm is almost fully reattached. A study of his blood revealed the entire process to be operating on a massively accelerated level: in the sample, I found platelets, fibrin, macrophages, and collagen. He is similar in that regard to Julian Slink, but unlike Slink, who develops a high fever, the subject’s temperature is only slightly elevated, possibly in reaction to the trauma of the initial wound, rather than the healing process itself.”

“I don’t know who you think you are—“

The man gestures to someone Ives can’t see, and a large woman in scrubs comes in holding a gag that looks as though it came fresh from a 1940s asylum. Ives has no way to resist as the woman fits it over his head. He can’t even bite, the woman was too careful to keep her fingers away from his mouth and too quick to fit the gag in place. The gag tastes like it came from a 1940s asylum.

“I will now attempt to document the entire process from beginning to end, as it pertains to surface lacerations.” The man steps out of view. 

Ives hears his footsteps cross the room, but he doesn’t come into Ives’ line of sight. His footsteps, accompanied by the sound of wheels on the tile floor, approach again, stopping next to Ives. The man is moving things around. Knowing he’s there but being unable to see him, unable to retaliate, unable to tell what he’s doing, is more than maddening. Ives tries to struggle, but all he can do is wriggle pathetically like a pinned worm. He suspects he knows what’s coming.

“Before making my incision, I will inject the subject with a paralyzing dose of cisatracurium to keep him still,” the man says. “He’s struggling in the bonds, which will make a clean cut more difficult to obtain. I don’t wish to sever his spinal cord yet, as the other did not survive the crash. It’s a pity, I have no way of knowing whether the subject’s partner had the same healing abilities. He might have made a useful control subject if he didn’t, and a spare if he did. I will just have to take a certain care with this one, I suppose. Nurse, the cisatracurium, please.”

Ives doesn’t have time to grieve, though hearing that Boyd didn’t survive hits him like a bullet. He yells wordlessly, loudly, when the woman twists his uninjured arm to an unnatural angle to reach the crook of his elbow. He doesn’t feel the needle slide into his vein, but the effect is immediate; Ives’ entire body goes limp and numb. For a terrifying moment, he’s reminded of the bear trap. It had nicked his spine, and left him numb from the waist down until he regained consciousness. He hopes the man will drug him again, he doesn’t want to be conscious for what’s coming next—

The scalpel cuts into his back and Ives yells again. The paralytic does nothing to dull his pain as the scalpel carves his back open as easily as Ives carves his prey. He can feel blood pouring down his back and pooling along his flanks. 

He’s going to kill them all. His system metabolizes the drugs too quickly, does it? He’s going to take advantage of that. Calculating for that won’t be easy for them. They’re going to get it wrong at some point, and when they do he’ll make them pay.

“Incision made at 9:25 AM, from the first thoracic vertebrae to the fifth. I will be timing the healing rate. Once this incision is healed, I’ll make another, possibly along the back of arm to see if any sites are privileged in the healing process. I plan to move on to other injuries, fractures and burns and such, and then chemicals and pathogens. I wish to know if the process extends only to injuries or if he recovers quickly from any trauma.”

There’s a click, and then the man says, “You know, Annie, I wish Slink would let me test him like this. He has so many bodies, surely he could spare me one.”

“They’re not conscious, though.”

“Consciousness is optional for healing. All I’m curious about is the mechanism. I’ve read the reports, but nothing compares to firsthand observation, don’t you think?”

“Yes, Doctor Vermaak.”

“Too bad the other one died. Ah well, at least we have this one, ja?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cisatracurium is a real drug, used during surgery to keep patients immobile. they're also usually unconscious. annie is named after annie wilcox, the nurse from stephen king's 'misery'.


	10. six merry men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sic 'em.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: gore, violence, cannibalism, monster body horror, medical horror

The road ends in a small ghost town dominated by a lab complex of four buildings. It was evidently a medical facility of some kind once, possibly even a small hospital; there’re still faint traces of a rod of Asclepius painted on the glass doors of the main building. A piece of printer paper with some kind of insignia on it is taped to the door; neither Boyd nor Rasher recognizes it. It’s not the Heart logo. Aside from the rod, there’re no other evidence of its past now, at least not that they can see from the shadows of an alley across the rutted road from the lab. There had been signs on the walls at some point in its past; the rusted rivets remain, though the signs themselves are long gone. The buildings barely look occupied, all slightly overgrown and the paint peeling off the concrete walls in strips. Weeds grow in the cracked pavement of the parking lot and sidewalks. There are no guards. 

Had it not been the only place in town even remotely large enough for any kind of lab, and had the road not ended right at it, Rasher and Boyd probably would’ve bypassed it entirely. They did, at first, thinking they’d missed something, so they turned down a side street. Doing so gave them a look behind the complex, and they realized they’d found the right place when they saw a dozen or so immaculate cars sitting in the parking lot. They hid the car nearby, in the ruins of an old gas station. It’s close enough that they should be able to get back to it with little trouble, but not so close that it stands out from a distance. Boyd hopes it’s enough. Rasher is unarmed, but Boyd has his hunting knife and he holds a crowbar Rasher had pulled out of the trunk of the Gremlin and handed to him. One end is filthy with dried chunks of flesh and blood.

Seeing the number of buildings fills Boyd with a kind of frustrated, impatient despair. Would they have to check all four? What if, while they were checking one building, someone realized they were there and moved Ives to a different building? Or another location entirely? What if he isn’t even there and they waste valuable time searching the building?

“Boyd,” Rasher says, pulling Boyd back to earth. “Keep the fuck out of my way. Don’t assume I’ll realize who you are. Get in the way, and I’ll eat you. Got it?” 

Boyd looks at him. There’s something off about him, even more than usual—some strange gleam in his dark eyes. He’s as still as a wolf that’s smelled blood on the breeze. He looks at Boyd, and Boyd can’t help taking a step back. There’s too much bloodlust in Rasher’s dark, deep-set eyes, even for Boyd. He’s used to killing now, used to hunting, and he’s lived with Ives for too long to still be bothered by the thought of taking joy in killing humans. But Boyd kills because he has to to survive, and at the end of the day so does Ives, no matter how much Ives enjoys the act itself of killing; Ives will scavenge, if he must. It’s simply a question of brutal arithmetic for them: without human flesh, they die, and since neither wants to die, they kill. 

Looking at him now, it’s abundantly clear that Rasher kills simply because he wants to. There’s no moralizing or questions of survival; Rasher’s just a good old-fashioned murderer, a garden-variety serial killer. He’d be a monster with or without the maw.

Hind-brain fear turns Boyd’s mouth as dry as a bone. He nods. Rasher mercifully turns away. He starts forward, and as he walks starts to change. 

It’s disgusting to watch. Rasher’s bones seem to outpace the changing of his skin, pressing so close to the surface that his skin bleaches bloodless white. For a moment Boyd thinks his skin will simply tear apart. It’s no wonder he’s covered in scars and stretch marks in strange places. Tendons and ligaments crackle so loudly as they stretch that even Boyd can hear them. His torso is stretching to inhuman lengths, and Boyd can’t tell if his bones are growing or if he’s sprouting new ones, but he sees the way Rasher’s spinous processes are stretching, pushing against his skin. They don’t quite break through, but it’s clearly a near thing. He’s again the monster Boyd saw in the trailer. Rasher stumbles a little, shakes his head like an animal as if he’s dazed, but keeps going forward. 

After a moment Boyd tentatively follows Rasher. He hears a low rumbling growl as tentacles lash the air. Rasher’s torso bows as he reaches the double glass doors of the building. He lays one long hand on the glass, lifts his head as if he’s sniffing the air. Boyd cautiously approaches, keeping well back from him. The tentacles are probing along the gap between the doors, sliding along like snakes or worms, leaving streaks of slime in their wake. The maw hisses faintly.

“Ives,” Rasher says, hissing a little on the sibilant. His voice is wrecked: it’s turned rough and breathy, as if something’s wrong with his lungs or his larynx. Boyd realizes his neck has stretched. A quiet noise, not quite a growl but not a sigh either, emanates from him and Boyd realizes with a chill that he doesn’t know if it came from Rasher or the maw. “We taste him.” His fingers curl slightly, claws scratching on the glass. He doesn’t seem entirely lucid. “Here.”

“Then let’s go,” Boyd says. 

Rasher glances at him, then puts another hand on the glass and pushes the door open. He has to bend almost double to get through. Boyd follows. They stand for a moment in the foyer. There are only two doors, besides the door they came in, and one clearly leads to what was once a receptionist’s station. The place is obviously in the process of being renovated; drop-cloths cover the floor by the walls, ladders lean against the corners, spattered paint cans sit in a neat row along the far wall. It smells of floor cleaner and varnish, fresh paint and, ever so faintly, blood. The dull embers of Boyd’s rage flare to life. Ives is here, and he’s been hurt, and Boyd will find him and get him back. That’s all that matters. Anyone who gets in his way will die. 

Boyd hears Rasher hiss again and turns to see him bend almost completely over, as if something in his abdomen is in pain. His spinous processes are stretching again, and this time they break through with little spurts of blood and a series of audible pops. Boyd almost gags. Black blooms along the base of the bones and spreads along Rasher’s veins and arteries like rot, creeping across his back like vines. There’s another series of crackling pops as bone spurs sprout from his elbows and wrists, vicious spikes Boyd is certain are weapons as much as the claws on his blackened hands. His sides swell just below his arms, and another pair of arms bursts free, normal in length compared to his other arms but just as clawed and rot-black. 

After a moment of panting breaths that press his ribs so close to the skin Boyd half-expects them to break through too, Rasher lifts his torso. There’s nothing human left in his eyes, no sense that Rasher was ever anything other than a beast—only a deep, animal hunger. He again tilts his head back slightly, and this time Boyd’s certain he’s scenting the air, there’s something in his manner that’s too reminiscent of a hound. Rasher then steps forward, and Boyd quickly gets out of the way. The tentacles are falling from the maw like intestines, twisting and writhing and curling independently of each other, one occasionally sliding back into the maw.

Boyd remembers what Ives said about the third season. He’d thought it was impossible, but seeing Rasher now, seeing how monstrous he can become, Boyd doesn’t doubt it at all. He realizes then how unfathomably lucky he and Ives had been, that they’d tangled with this and survived. Rasher’s advice to keep away was well-deserved; Boyd knows instinctively that if Rasher turns on him, he doesn’t stand a chance in hell of walking away with all his limbs intact, if he walks away at all.

Rasher heads for the door opposite the receptionist’s station, and Boyd follows, keeping a few feet between them. Beyond it stretches a hallway lined with doors, likely the former exam rooms or test labs. The doors all stand open, and Boyd goes to peer into one. It’s empty but for more paint cans and drop cloths. Boyd goes back to the hallway. Rasher’s ignoring the empty rooms, though one of the tentacles points towards each door as he passes. They come to the end of the hall, finding a stairwell and another, shorter corridor with two doors. One is labelled “Janitor”. 

The other door opens, and a tall, skinny man in a lab coat steps out. He stops in his tracks when he sees Rasher and Boyd. His jaw drops.

In a blur of limbs and tentacles Rasher’s on the man before he can scream. Boyd catches only nightmarish glimpses of what happens, his view happily blocked by Rasher’s body, but he can see enough to know that the man is torn apart and devoured in chunks. Blood and small gobbets of flesh spatter the floor. A hand drops to the floor before a tentacle seizes it. Other tentacles quest along the floor, scooping up larger chunks and curling back up to the maw with them. Something rumbles, and Rasher turns back around. He glances into the room the man had come from, but it must be devoid of interest; Rasher comes back towards Boyd, who scrambles out of the way. Rasher ignores him and heads up the stairs, going on all fours (sixes?) like an animal. It looks undignified to Boyd, but possibly Rasher’s too top-heavy, his torso too long, for him to go upright. 

They head through another door at the next landing, Rasher stepping through and Boyd hanging back holding the door. From what Boyd can see, this hallway is little different from the one above, the same kinds of doors and the same smell of paint and cleaners. If there’s anything there, it’s nothing to interest them. Rasher turns and comes back through the door. Something hisses, and this time Boyd can tell it’s the maw; three slim tentacles twist together as if in frustration. Rasher’s upper lip twitches back in an abbreviated snarl. He goes down another flight of stairs, Boyd on his heels. They go through the door on the landing, and this time Rasher freezes as soon as he gets into the corridor. His body is stiff and tense, the tentacles slowing in their writhing, and Boyd can see the way his breath quickens. He can’t see around him enough to know what’s causing this reaction; all he can see is another identical hallway.

But he hears a wordless yell of pain, and his blood runs cold. It isn’t Ives, and Boyd is only grateful; the yell had been gut-wrenching to hear, a truly awful sound of human misery and anguish. What’s going on here? What the hell is Vermaak doing, is this even Vermaak’s lab? He hears a door open, and leans around Rasher to see that two women in scrubs have come out of one of the doors in the middle of the hall. 

“—Vermaak’s gonna be pissed the subject died,” one says. “He had high hopes for that one.”

“Yeah, well, if he’d do the animal testing right, he wouldn’t kill so many humans,” the other says. She doesn’t sound remorseful, only scornful. “God knows why Heart loves him so much, his experiments fucking suck. How does he learn anything from…” She’s trailed off, and Boyd realizes she’s seen them. “Oh, my god.”

“What the fuck is that?” the first says. Her voice is tight with fear. 

“I don’t know, but call security,” the second says. “Go, hurry—“

Rasher roars and bounds forward. The women scream and sprint for the other end, but Rasher’s too fast. He pounces on one and brings her down, one massive hand on the back of her skull. He doesn’t even bother to eat her, just smashes her head down and rushes the other. Her, he does eat, seizing her limbs in tentacles and tearing her apart like the doctor on the first floor. The first woman struggles to her feet, blood streaming down her face where her forehead had split on the tile floor, and turns around. She sees Boyd and hope flares in her eyes.

“H-help us!” she cries. “Please!”

For a split second, Boyd just stares at her. Everything happened so fast, so suddenly; his brain hasn’t caught up yet. Then an angular, twisted shape looms over her as Rasher reaches her, tentacles wrapping around her and hauling her kicking and screaming towards the maw. Her scream cuts off abruptly when the maw closes over her head and shoulders. There’s a crunch as it bites through her ribcage, and what’s left of her torso goes limp as her now-severed arms fall to the floor. The maw devours her in two more crunching bites, then scoops up her arms and eats those too. 

Rasher stands for a moment as if collecting himself, then turns on his heel and goes to the door the women had come out of. He looks in, utterly still apart from the twisting tentacles. The tentacles slow almost to a halt. Then the maw bellows, a bass roar Boyd feels in his bones. Rasher’s human voice echoes it as he surges through the door. Boyd stays put as if nailed to the floor, eyes wide, as he listens to the sound of Rasher’s rage: objects clattering and smashing, glass shattering, inhuman roars that sound more hurt than angered. Boyd knows he needs to move, that every second Rasher spends destroying things is another second closer to someone raising an alarm, but he can’t move. What did Rasher see in there? What made him so furious that he had to waste time ransacking a single room?

The racket grows silent, and after a moment Boyd hears a quiet rumble. Another moment passes, and Rasher comes out. He’s tracking blood across the floor, but it’s not his—he’s uninjured. Boyd quickly steps aside as he passes, then looks down the hallway to the open door. A toxic-looking liquid is slowly spreading out of the door, dirty yellow with an oily sheen. Boyd turns and follows Rasher.

—

Ives has no way of measuring the passage of time except for the healing itch of the incisions on his back. He can tell he’s healing more slowly than normal; he can feel the way the incisions pull and he knows that although they should be fully healed by now, they’re still healing. He hasn’t eaten since before the accident, which is likely why. His back is covered in injuries, a latticework of cuts from scalpels, knives, even a bone saw that Vermaak had dragged across his spine to leave a ragged, terrible wound. Ives has no idea how long it’s been—it could have been minutes, hours, days. Time has become one long blur of pain and helpless rage. That big nurse had put him in a hospital johnnie; the air is cold against his back. He’s unbound, but he still can’t move; they drugged him some time ago, a sedative and more of the paralytic.

But they’re both wearing off. He can feel it. He wiggles his toes, then his fingertips. He grins, a pointed, vicious expression that Boyd would know all too well.

Grief stabs into him at the thought of Boyd then, sharp and jagged and cruel. Fuck, but he misses Boyd. He can’t think of Boyd, lest grief immobilize him worse than the paralytic. He’d already wept for him once after Vermaak’s nurse had put him in this padded cell, tears streaming down his motionless face as his back burned with pain. He’s alone and he hurts, the physical pain of the wounds on his back sharpened and edged with the pain of loss and the pain of loneliness. He wants to curl up in a ball, he wants to hide, he… he wants Boyd. He wants to crawl into Boyd’s strong arms and hide from Vermaak and the race and the pain and the whole awful world. God, he misses him so bad. He wants him back more than he’s ever wanted anything in his long, long life. He never would have imagined in 1847 he’d come to need Boyd so much, and hadn’t even realized how badly he needed him until he’d heard Vermaak pronounce Boyd dead in absentia. He wants him back.

But Boyd is gone from his reach. He wants to cry again, but he can’t. He’ll wait until he’s out of here, and then he’ll give his grief all the voice it wants. He’ll leave a trail of death behind him, and he’ll make sure Slink’s corpse is at the top of the pile. Rasher’s, too. It’s Slink’s fault Boyd’s dead; if Slink hadn’t forced them into his murdershow, Heart never would’ve known about Boyd and Ives, and that horrid doctor wouldn’t have wanted to study them and forced them into a fatal car crash. Ives wants Slink dead almost as bad as he wants Vermaak dead.

He tries to move his limbs to distract himself from his grief. His legs don’t move much, but his arms are getting better. The one that had been nearly torn off is a little stiffer than the other, a little less recovered from the paralytic, but Ives thinks he can compensate well enough. He’s mostly over the sedative, he thinks; he’s still logy, but he’s alert enough. If an opportunity presents itself, he can take it.

The door swings open to admit a pair of orderlies, burly men wearing scrubs and nitrile gloves. They don’t speak as they wheel a gurney into Ives’ cell, and Ives feels his heart speed up. There are no straps on the gurney. They must be trusting in the paralytic alone to keep him contained. Vermaak didn’t pass on his suspicions that Ives recovers too quickly from drugs.

The orderlies grab Ives, one his ankles and one his shoulders. Ives doesn’t have to pretend to be limp as they carry him to the gurney. They drop him onto the gurney and wheel him to the lab. Once there they lift him to the operating table. Ives hopes they won’t strap him down here, he’s screwed if they do—but they don’t bother with the restraints. God, they really are careless. They roll over a tray of surgical instruments, all bright gleaming steel scalpels and bone saws and forceps, and set it up against the operating table. It’s so close, all he has to do is reach six inches as soon as the orderlies turn around; it’s even on the wrong side of the table for someone coming through the door to see anything amiss.

Ives’ eyes gleam. The orderlies turn and head for the door, and as soon as it shuts Ives starts trying to move his arms. The tray is on his good side, a small mercy he’d thank God for if he thought God had anything to do with it. He has almost no dexterity yet, but he’s got just enough grip strength that he thinks he can pick up a scalpel. He won’t need finesse. He just needs the scalpel in his hand.

His hand hits the tray hard enough to make the tools all jump, and he nearly knocks it over. He swears breathlessly, suddenly afraid he’s going to pull the damn thing over and spill everything on the floor. But it stays upright, and he’s able to inch his hand to the scalpels. He manages to grab one, and holds it as tight as he can while he retracts his arm. It’s obvious one’s missing, but with luck that won’t matter. He tucks his arm against his side, the scalpel almost under him, and waits.

After a few minutes the doors open. It isn’t Vermaak who walks through, just a pair of anonymous lab techs, but Ives doesn’t care. He’ll get Vermaak later. Escape is the priority right now. Vengeance can wait. They’re both talking about football, which is almost surprising—there’s no professional football anymore, since no one can afford it. Amateur enthusiasts? Doesn’t matter. Ives tightens his grip on the scalpel as they come close. He’ll only have one shot, and he intends to take it. He won’t miss. He can’t miss. He has to get out of this hellhole.

He has to make everyone pay.

—

Rasher’s moving quickly now, as if a switch has been flipped in him. Boyd can barely keep up; he’s following the trail of blood more than Rasher himself. Each landing he comes to, he finds a bloody handprint smeared on the wall or the door, and each time he peers through the door he sees splattered blood and occasionally chunks of flesh. Boyd is almost glad to be following in his wake, he has no desire to see what Rasher’s really capable of like this, but he’s worried Rasher’s not going to recognize Ives when he finds him. It would be too ironic if the monster Boyd brought to help rescue Ives just ends up killing him. And at any rate, Rasher’s apparently forgotten the whole reason they’re there; he seems more invested in killing scientists than finding Ives. Boyd decides to leave him to it.

He starts to head back down the stairs instead of up. Before he’d simply looked in on each floor to see Rasher’s trail of destruction and left. But now he checks each floor, looking in any open door. He finds chemical laboratories, operating rooms, and on every floor a room containing nothing but caged lab animals—rhesus monkeys, rats, mice, rabbits. He wonders how one man manages to fund a place like this; surely Vermaak isn’t working alone, this is a full facility with a large number of staff and a massive amount of equipment. Surely Vermaak’s just renting space.

He avoids the room on the second floor that had so enraged Rasher.

There are five floors and one basement level. The top floor, as he’s already seen, is only storage. Not even Rasher bothered going through it. (Boyd finds him wreaking havoc on the third floor, where there’s evidently a cafeteria of some kind, if the amount of screams coming from the hallway is any indication.) The first floor is only the entrance and a handful of offices. Boyd heads down to the basement.

Rasher hasn’t been down this far yet, Boyd knows; he’ll have to be careful. He adjusts his grip on the crowbar as he opens the door to the stairwell, holding it like a baseball bat. There’s an alcove by the door, and a security guard sits there reading a newspaper. She looks up when the doors open and sees Boyd.

“Hey, who the fuck are you?” she asks. “You can’t be here.” She gets up, reaching for the walkie-talkie on her belt with one hand and her gun with the other.

Boyd’s not quite the fighter Ives is, but he’s faster than the average human. He rushes up and swings the crowbar at her gun-hand, smashing the bones of her hand like twigs. She yells, curling slightly over her broken hand, and Boyd smashes the crowbar across the back of her skull. She crumples, landing on her back, staring up at Boyd with horror and confusion clouding her eyes. Her mouth works soundlessly. Boyd turns her head with his foot, heedless of the way she claws weakly at his ankle, and draws his knife. He drops to one knee and, without any hesitation or consideration, slits her throat. 

Boyd wipes his knife on her shoulder, then stands and turns his back on her without a second glance. He advances slowly down the hall, trying to move quietly. The hallway, like the others above, is lined with doors, but unlike the rest of the doors these are clearly security doors, locked with keycards, their windows reinforced glass. He goes back and searches the security guard’s corpse, but she didn’t have one of the keycards. His heart sinks. If there’s anyone in this building carrying the keycards, they’re likely dead or devoured, the keycards with them. Still, it’s a moot point if Ives isn’t here. 

Boyd goes down the hall, carefully peeking through each window. They’re all no more furnished than a prison cell, cots bolted to the wall and open toilets and little else. The walls and floors are padded. Most of them are occupied. None of the cells’ inhabitants stir as Boyd looks in on them; they simply lie curled on their cots, either staring into space or unconscious. He can’t work out what they’re doing there, though he can see track marks on some of them. One, sitting with his back to the wall, sees Boyd when he looks in. The entire right side of his face is bandaged, as is the stump of his right arm. He lifts his other to wave, and Boyd sees a metal prosthesis attached, a skeleton of a hand and arm jutting from the man’s elbow, wrapped in wires and cords. There’s nothing in his gaze.

Boyd quickly leaves.

This floor is more labyrinthine than the ones above, with branching side-corridors leading to more cells. He’s just about to head down one when he hears yelling from the end of the hall, where waiting at the end is a set of double swing-doors leading to what Boyd suspects is an operating room. For a moment he thinks Rasher’s arrived, but someone yells again and this time he recognizes the accent.

“Ives,” he breathes. He sprints towards the double doors.

Blood splatters the window moments before the doors burst open to reveal Ives, clad only in a bloody hospital gown and clutching a scalpel in one hand. He looks wild, his hair straggling over his bloodstained face and his bloodied teeth bared, like a vision of the past—all he’s missing is a cross drawn in blood on his forehead. The doors swing shut behind him, but not before Boyd gets a glimpse of bodies on the floor. One has had its throat torn out and Boyd knows that Ives tore it out with his teeth. He wonders if one was Vermaak. Ives’ gaze is wild, his eyes clouded with rage and pain. He sees Boyd, and for a moment he doesn’t recognize him. He yells and rushes forward. His gait is clumsy, as if his arms and legs won’t move right, and Boyd thinks he must’ve been drugged.

“Ives, wait!” Boyd cries, dropping the crowbar. He catches Ives’ arms, wrestles with him for a moment, struggling to avoid being stabbed. Ives is powerfully strong in his rage, and while Boyd is no pushover and the larger man besides, Ives’ ferocity more than compensates. “Ives, calm d—Ives, it’s me! It’s Boyd!”

Ives freezes. His dark eyes search Boyd’s face, his gaze tracking over every inch before catching and holding Boyd’s own. 

“Oh, god, _John_ ,” Ives gasps. 

Ives drops the scalpel and half-falls into Boyd’s arms. His fingers knot in the back of Boyd’s shirt as he buries his face against Boyd’s shoulder. Boyd holds him tight and for a time forgets where they are, how they got here, who or what is rampaging around mere floors above. Ives is here. Ives is here, back where he belongs, back in Boyd’s arms. He tucks his face at the crook of Ives’ neck, breathes in the smell of him, blood and pain and that feral rage he knows so well. He kisses his neck and reluctantly draws back. Ives doesn’t let go, but he lets Boyd back away slightly.

“We’ve got to go,” Boyd says. He bends to grab the crowbar. “Rasher’s upstairs, I don’t know when he’ll finish but—come on, I’ll explain on the way. I’ve got our things in the car.”

“In—the car was totaled—“

“Not our car. Come on.”

He takes Ives by the hand and leads the way down the hall. Ives’ step grows more sure as they go. 

“I woke up at the Blood Drive,” Boyd says. “Rasher was there. He says we’re free of the race, since I was the only one they pulled out of the Alfa and the deal was for both of us. Heart thinks I’m dead and likely you too, Rasher and Slink don’t think Vermaak was acting on Heart’s orders when he took you. I told Rasher I’d come for you and he volunteered to come along. I don’t know why.” He can’t help the shudder that wracks his body. “He’s even more of a monster than we thought, Ives. You’ll see.” 

They don’t run, exactly, but they hurry down the hall, Ives’ bare feet slapping on the tile floor. Ives determinedly keeps his eyes forward, not looking at any of the cell doors they pass. He pauses at the dead security guard, though, licking his lips.

“I’m sorry, Ives, there’s no time,” Boyd says.

“What a waste,” Ives murmurs. He follows Boyd through the doors and up the stairs. 

They come to the first-floor landing and out into the hall, barely sparing a glance at the congealing blood and the chunks of flesh that the maw had deemed too small to bother with. They make it to the foyer, and to their horror find three guards standing there, hands on their guns. The guards turn at the sound of the door opening. For a moment everyone simply stands there staring at each other. 

Then Ives lets out a yell. He grabs Boyd’s knife from his belt and charges the guards. He’s on them before they can react, slashing one’s throat wide open, the other two yelling in shock and scrambling back. Boyd sees one get his gun free and runs towards him. He smashes his skull open with the crowbar, hits him in the throat for good measure and crumples his windpipe. He leaves him choking to death and looks up to see Ives grappling with the third man. The knife is on the floor, and Ives’ bare feet are slipping in the blood. He’s weakened from captivity, Boyd realizes in a split-second, likely he hasn’t eaten well since before the crash. 

Ives’ knees buckle, but Boyd is there before he goes down, bringing the crowbar down on the guard’s head and denting his skull with a sickening sound. The guard lets go of Ives and turns, but Boyd swings the crowbar again, catching the guard in the jaw and shattering it. Teeth fly across the room. The man crumples. Boyd brings the crowbar down again, then once more, leaving the side of his head a shattered, ruined mess of broken bone and brain matter. 

He goes to Ives, who has returned to his feet, and holds him tight again. Ives leans heavily against him. They stand like this for an uncounted length of time, both simply finding solace that the other still lives, that neither of them is alone anymore. Boyd knows they need to leave and get back to the car to wait for Rasher, but he doesn’t want to move yet. Ives is trembling, a fine vibration running through him like electricity, and Boyd’s loathe to let him go. He just wants to savor this. He leans back enough to tip Ives’ face back for a kiss, tasting blood on Ives’ lips and in his mouth. Ives’ hands settle warm at the sides of Boyd’s neck.

They jerk apart and whirl around when the door opens, Boyd instinctively pushing Ives behind him, but it’s only Rasher who ducks through. Boyd hears Ives gasp. Rasher is covered in blood and gore, marked here and there with wounds that heal as Boyd and Ives watch, still the monster he’d been when Boyd left him to his rage. The maw rumbles, flicking tentacles like a human shakes water from their hands, and then all the tentacles slowly slide back in. Rasher’s shoulders twitch, and he visibly begins to shrink. The spines and spurs are receding back into his skin, which closes over them and heals in moments, as the black of his hands and veins fades to nothing. His second set of arms cracks at the elbows and wrists and then shrink back to his sides, vanishing like they’d never been. He’s shaking by the end, panting like he’s just run a marathon. He’s just a man again, albeit a man with a monster on his belly.

“Howdy,” he says. His voice is awful, hoarse and broken. He reaches into his pocket, heedless of the blood on his hands, and tugs the keys out. “Think fast.” He tosses the keys to Boyd. “You gotta drive, I’m about to pass the fuck out.”

They make it back to the Gremlin with no trouble. Sunset is stretching the shadows of the dead town out to unnatural lengths, and there’s something more sad than eerie about the town now. Its last vestiges of life were in that lab, Boyd suspects, and they’ve been mercilessly snuffed out. Whoever Rasher left alive, if he left anyone at all, surely won’t stay. The prisoners in the basement will likely be abandoned to their lonely fates. Soon there’ll be nothing left but weeds and animals and silent ruins, just another reminder of the world that was and the failures of man, populated only by ghosts and memories locked in the decaying walls. 

Rasher ignores the ambiance. He gets into the trunk and pulls an old towel and a large jug of water out. He starts trying to clean himself off. Boyd steps around him as he dumps water over his head and gets Ives’ duffel bag to pull out clothes and shoes for him. The gratitude on Ives’ face is almost painful to see. Ives dresses, his fingers fumbling slightly over the buttons of his shirt, then drops into the back seat and closes his eyes. Boyd wishes he could hold him, but he’s the only one fit to drive.

Rasher finishes and tosses the bloodstained towel to the ground. The jug goes back into the trunk, and Rasher goes to the passenger seat. Boyd tosses the crowbar back in and closes the trunk. He gets into the driver’s seat, finds that Rasher has already put the passenger seat back and closed his eyes; he’s asleep in seconds. Boyd starts the engine.

Before long, the town and its lab are nothing but a fading blot on the horizon, little more than a graveyard memory.


	11. lullaby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a moment of peace, heartfelt reunions, and fucking like bunnies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: trauma, explicit sex, anal, Let's Talk About Feelings (no, i'm not referencing a lagwagon album)

They drive through the night and the morning of the next day, crossing at least one state line in the process. If Boyd has to feed anyone to the engine, he doesn’t mention it and Ives and Rasher are unaware of it. They sleep most of the way, though Ives less than Rasher; the drugs Vermaak had kept Ives on were mostly out of his system, but his adrenalin has crashed out and he’s groggy as hell, his thoughts dragging as if through mud. When he’s awake, Ives stares listlessly out of the window, forehead resting on the glass. Rasher is mostly sacked out in the front seat. 

At one point early in the morning, dawn just beginning to break on the horizon, Ives wakes with his head in Boyd’s lap, streetlights passing orange glows through the car. Boyd’s fingers are stroking through his hair. Rasher’s driving, one hand on the wheel and the other propping his head up on the windowsill. The radio is on, faint Johnny Cash fading in and out of the static as he sings his pain. It’s a strange feeling, one Ives can’t quite put a name to; something liminal, something faded and creased like an old road map. The strobing lights make everything feel unreal. He turns to face Boyd’s belly and closes his eyes again. He drifts off again to the feel of Boyd’s fingers in his hair.

Early in the evening they leave the highway and pull into a motel parking lot. Ives, still laying across the seat with his head in Boyd’s lap, can just barely see a broken sign, the neon ‘Vacancy’ flickering erratically, the motel’s name hidden from view. 

“Is stopping safe?” Ives hears Boyd ask. 

“Gonna have to take the chance, I can’t keep driving,” Rasher replies. “We all need a night in real beds.” He leaves the engine running. The car door opens and shuts.

Ives and Boyd stay in the car as Rasher goes into the motel office. Ives makes himself sit up and looks around outside. Wherever they are, it’s a singularly depressing tract of land; a run-down little motel in the middle of barren fields, stretching wide and flat all around, the parking lot cracked and one of the streetlights bent. Rain is beginning to spot the windows. There’s an indistinct smudge on the horizon that might be a town.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“Kansas, somewhere,” Boyd replies. “Rasher seems to know where exactly we are, but I have no idea.”

Rasher comes out of the office then. His shoulders are straight as if he’s braced himself for a blow, his gait stiff. He’s walking like a man in pain. He slings himself back into the car and tosses a key to Boyd. He sees Ives upright and conscious and just nods to him.

“Welcome back,” he says. “Got us rooms.”

Their rooms are on the far end of the motel from the office, side by side. Theirs is the only car in the lot, Ives sees as he gets out. Rasher lets himself into his room and shuts the door without a word. Boyd hands the key to Ives, then goes to get their bags out of the car. Ives meanwhile opens the door. The room’s small, barely large enough for the bed and a chair, with an open door through which Ives can see a dark bathroom. It smells of dust and age, but not of mildew or dirt. Ives has slept in worse places through the years. Boyd closes the door behind him as he tosses their bags into the chair. Ives feels something in him splinter.

“I need a shower,” he declares, hoping his voice doesn’t evince how close he is to crumbling. He doesn’t want Boyd to see him break. All the years they’ve been together, and Boyd has never seen Ives broken, and that’s entirely by design. Ives cannot let anyone see him broken; his ego doesn’t permit it. Bad enough Boyd saw him after Rasher broke his arm, bad enough Boyd saw him at the lab. Ives breaks in private, and he always has.

Boyd looks over at him, and Ives feels uncomfortably _seen_ , as though his skin is as clear as glass and his thoughts are laid bare. He should know better than to think he can hide anything from Boyd; they’ve known each other too long, he’s dissected Boyd in his mind as thoroughly as Boyd has surely dissected Ives. How can two men who’ve known each other for so long ever hope to have secrets from each other? He quickly heads into the bathroom and shuts the door. It’s a dingy little room, the mirror water-spotted and cracked in one corner, the light dim, but like the room outside it’s clean. Ives turns on the shower and the fan and lets himself slide to the floor. A shuddering, painful sound claws out of his throat, a sob strangled in its cradle, and he claps a hand over his mouth. The fan and the shower are loud, but not nearly loud enough, if he makes too much noise Boyd will hear him and come in—all he wants is to lick his wounds—

He pulls his knees to his chest, rests his forehead on them, clasps his hands over the back of his head. Curled up like this, he thinks he can smell the lab on his skin: disinfectants and chemicals and blood. It is only with the most supreme effort that Ives keeps silent, for all that he’s an inch from hyperventilating with the harsh way he’s breathing right now. It hadn’t been the indignity of what Vermaak had done to him, or the pain; it had been the helplessness. It was being strapped down and unable to defend himself, drugged and immobilized, fully aware of what was happening and completely incapable of stopping it. It was all too reminiscent of the tuberculosis, when his own body had been hijacked and turned against him by the disease. Worse, really; he hadn’t been able to help the tuberculosis. It was the nineteenth century; medical science essentially didn’t exist. It’s difficult to avoid a disease when no one knows how it spreads or how to treat it. No one was really to blame, neither the bacteria for its nature nor Ives for contracting it.

But Vermaak wasn’t a bacteria. He was a man who had decided to treat Ives like a science experiment. Vermaak had chosen to do everything. He’d chosen to cause the car crash, to have Ives hauled from the wreckage, to leave Boyd for dead (which, really, Ives ought to thank him for, since it meant Boyd never had to endure Vermaak’s curiosity), to vivisect Ives like a frog. The tuberculosis bacterium acts according to its nature; it is not immoral for killing those it infects. It has no control over the effect its life has on a human body. Even Ives, really, only acts according to nature—he kills because he has to, because he wouldn’t survive otherwise. He enjoys it, certainly, but at the end of the day he has no real choice in the matter, because his only other option is death and that’s no option at all. Vermaak chooses to be what he is, to do what he does, and to Ives that makes him far worse. If there’s real evil in the world, it’s in men like Vermaak, not men like Boyd and Ives.

“Ives?”

He scrambles to his feet and yanks his shirt off so quickly he hears something tear. “Yes, Boyd?” he calls in reply, and thank God for his past acting career, because he sounds almost normal.

“I… are you all right?”

Damn Boyd for becoming a trauma therapist.

“I’m fine.”

There’s no reply, and Ives thinks he’s in the clear. But then the knob turns and the door eases open. Ives quickly finishes undressing. “I don’t think you should be alone right now,” Boyd says.

“Maybe I want to be.” Ives yanks the shower curtain aside and steps in. The water’s almost scalding. As much as he wanted the imagined smell of the lab off his skin, he hadn’t actually needed a shower; what he wanted was space, but stubborn fucking Boyd, more determined than a coward had any right to be—

But Boyd’s no coward, not anymore, if indeed he ever was. Can one moment of indecision and panic and fear really be held against someone? Was he really that deserving of being labelled a coward? It’s no wonder he froze in battle; anyone would, really. Ives has always been surprised it doesn’t happen more often. And besides, Boyd is calculating, which has too often been mistaken for cowardice; the need to step back and find a path forward can look like hesitation, rather than good sense. Why stumble through the dark rather than take a moment to look for a light? Boyd simply doesn’t like charging in blind. He’d given his all to the point of sacrificing himself at Fort Spencer, and he’d come running to Ives’ rescue alongside a genuine monster; no, Boyd was no coward.

Ives hears nothing over the sound of the shower, sees nothing through the steam and the curtain, and so he thinks perhaps Boyd left. He steps under the flow, just as the curtain slides aside and arms encircle his waist. Nearly six long feet of bare skin presses up against him, and probably Boyd didn’t intend for it to be sexual, maybe he just wanted the intimacy of showering together, but suddenly so much comes crashing down on Ives: the adrenalin of attacking the lab techs and the escape, the knee-buckling relief of seeing Boyd alive and well, the inexpressible and unexpected pure joy of falling into his arms when he’d thought he was dead. 

_That_ had been the worst, Ives realizes as arousal flashes hot through his entire body, the thought of never seeing Boyd again. Not Vermaak, not the pain, not the indignity; the prospect of spending the rest of his life alone and miserable. Ives hates being alone and always has. There was only one reason he’d been so determined to make others like himself, and it was sheer loneliness. It wasn’t about ruling or control; it was just companionship, pure and simple. He hates being alone, and after so many years the thought of being without Boyd is more than painful, it’s fucking agony. To never again hear his voice, or touch his skin, or wake in his arms, or look into the crystalline blue of his eyes the way he’s done for over a hundred years… he couldn’t bear it. However they’d started out, back in 1847, they’re utterly entwined now; tearing them apart would surely kill Ives. Having Boyd back, feeling his skin against Ives’ own when he’d thought he’d lost him for good, is far headier than he ever would’ve imagined.

Ives turns and pulls Boyd into a biting kiss, sheer need and aching desire and the realization that he is nothing, _nothing_ , without John Boyd. Boyd has become his whole world. Boyd kisses him back at first, meeting him in want, but then he pushes him back.

“Ives—“ he starts. 

“They said you were dead,” Ives blurts out. “Vermaak and the others, they—he said you didn’t survive, and I—I couldn’t believe—he said you were dead and that he had to take a certain care not to lose me, and all he cared about was that in losing you he lost either a control case or a spare—a _spare_ , like you’re just… just some _extra parts_ no one needs—“

“Ives—!”

“—And that’s wrong, that’s— _I_ need you, you’re not just extra parts, you’re my…” His voice cuts out abruptly, his throat suddenly too tight. He swallows, puts his head on Boyd’s shoulder. “I need you, Boyd, I could lose everything so long as I have you—“

Boyd doesn’t try to speak again, just tips Ives’ head back and kisses him. Ives whimpers a little, presses as close as their bodies allow and it’s not enough, if he could crack Boyd’s ribs open and curl around his heart, live in the hollow of his chest and every second feel the beat of Boyd’s heart against his own, he would. God, he wants him, he has to feel him, the heat of him and the solid strength of him, to know with every touch that Boyd is alive and well and back in Ives’ arms. Boyd’s arms go tight around his shoulders as his left hand slides up the back of Ives’ neck and makes him shudder, before he loosely grips Ives’ hair and tugs a little. Ives lets out a desperate little whine and tips his head back, baring his neck for Boyd, begging wordlessly. Boyd obliges, leaving kisses along the column of Ives’ throat, nipping gently, dragging the flat of his tongue through the water streaming down Ives’ neck. Ives feels himself throb.

“Boyd, fuck me,” he says. “I need you.”

Boyd groans against Ives’ neck and ruts against Ives’ hip unthinkingly, making his own need crystal-clear, his cock hard and hot against Ives’ skin. It had to have been painful for him, too, being apart; Ives has long known how dependent Boyd is on him. Even before their first night in bed in Gettysburg, Boyd had always gone where Ives led him, had stood by him through twenty-odd years of a barbed, prickly coexistence that became something like friendship and, gradually, turned into something more. Ives knows, therefore, that his absence from Boyd’s side must’ve been as agonizing for Boyd as it was for Ives. And Boyd’s desperation to be touched only confirms it. (The fact that Ives is as dependent on Boyd is—Ives refuses to admit it, but he knows it’s true. He needs a companion, and Boyd, for better or worse, is his; he’d made him, he’d bound them together in blood and violence and desire and above all singularity: there are no others like them in the world. Ives, who hates being alone, would naturally cleave to someone he knew would last uncounted ages with him.)

“Shut the water off,” Boyd says. Ives does, and they stumble from the bathroom to the bed, unable to keep their hands off each other for longer than a few seconds. Boyd had already turned the bed down, Ives sees as he falls to the sheets, landing on his back. Boyd is on him immediately, slotting his hips between Ives’ legs, kissing down Ives’ neck to his chest, licking up his sternum before moving to tease Ives’ nipples with lips and fingers. Ives groans.

“Boyd, please,” he pants. “Please, I can’t—I _need you_ —“ He manages to slip free and rolls onto his belly. He actually ruts against the bed, mindlessly, for a moment, desperate and blind with need.

“Fuck,” Boyd breathes. Ives feels his weight leave the bed, hears him rummage around in their bags. When he returns, kneeling between Ives’ knees, Ives hears the sound of the bottle of lube opening. Ives spreads his legs wide. He expects to feel slicked fingers pressing into him, but all he hears is a choked little sound. He cranes his head around to see Boyd staring at his back in what looks like horror. Boyd’s eyes meet his, and there’s sympathetic hurt in his gaze. “Ives, your back—what did he _do_ to you?”

Ives reaches around and feels ridges of scar tissue under his fingertips, neat little lines along his spine and across his shoulder blades. He closes his eyes. Of course there are scars; he’s underfed. He’ll need to eat again before they’ll fade.

“Nothing that’ll stay,” he says. He’ll let them hurt later; he doesn’t want to think about them right now, not when he aches with the absence of Boyd’s body against and inside his own. “Don’t worry about them. Please, Boyd, I need to feel you more than I need to think about them.”

After a moment Boyd leans down and kisses one of the scars. Then, finally, Ives feels Boyd’s fingers gently sliding against his hole, rubbing slightly before pushing in. 

“Ah—“ Ives pushes back, all impatient need and desire, his want almost painfully clear. “Boyd, please—“ He hears Boyd groan at the raw want in Ives’ voice, and Boyd wastes no time. He’s quick about opening Ives up, he’s quick to pull Ives’ hips up so Ives is on his elbows and knees, and he’s quick to mount Ives and push into him inch by inch in measured thrusts. Ives doesn’t even try to hold back a near-wail as Boyd buries himself to the hilt. It’s almost overwhelming, having Boyd atop him and in him again a mere day after believing he’d lost him for good. He rocks himself back against Boyd and hears Boyd groan.

“Fuck, Ives—“

“Yes—Boyd, come on—“

Boyd builds up to a punishing rhythm, heat and force and hands clenched so hard on Ives’ hips he’ll have bruises by the morning, and Ives is lost to it. Coherent thought is gone; he’s reduced to pure sensation, his entire being focused on Boyd. Boyd fucks him hard and fast, pouring his own desperation and need and relief into it, making it completely clear he needed this every bit as badly as Ives did. Ives clutches at the sheets, panting openmouthed into the pillow, rocking back against Boyd as if he can drive him deeper, harder, though Boyd is balls-deep already, it’s almost not enough—Ives needs—

“Boyd, hold me,” he gasps. 

Still thrusting into Ives, Boyd wraps one arm around Ives’ his chest, bracing himself on the bed with the other. Ives can feel the length of him, feel his breath against his neck as he pants, and lets out a long-drawn moan. This is it, this is what he needs—to be wrapped in Boyd, encompassed in his pleasure and his body as Boyd fucks him senseless, to have his awareness focused wholly on the present moment of Boyd’s embrace. Each thrust of Boyd’s hips pushes a sharp sound out of Ives, more than audible over the creak of the bed, and he knows Rasher can probably hear them through the wall and it doesn’t matter in the least. Ives has never been a man to hold back on his pleasure and he won’t start now. He won’t last and doesn’t care, he’s drawing close to the edge and will fling himself off with glorious abandon. 

Boyd comes first, going stiff against him, panting out Ives’ name like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to his body. His teeth find and close around the crook of Ives’ neck and shoulder. Ives whines, feeling claimed and owned and god, he’s _delighted_ by it. He’s Boyd’s, and no one else’s. He lets out a sound not unlike a sob and comes then—he shatters with it, knowing Boyd will pick up his pieces and put them back together.

They both go limp, collapsing utterly bonelessly to the bed, and lay in silence for a long moment that stretches like sun-warmed taffy as their breathing slows. Ives feels wonderfully loose, finally at ease in himself again for the first time in days. He’s more than content to lie there under Boyd. He purrs when Boyd kisses his shoulder.

“I missed you too,” Boyd says, his voice rough. He pulls out and shifts so he isn’t laying completely on Ives, who rolls to face him. Ives takes his face between his hands and kisses him languidly, hikes a leg over Boyd’s hip. 

He loves him, he realizes. God help them both, but Ives loves Boyd, with all his black little heart. His bright eyes, his quiet ways, his iron determination, and greedy bastard that Ives is and always has been he wants all of Boyd to himself. He wants to keep him close and hold onto him until the world truly ends and they’re the last two to walk the dead earth, and even past then. He will never let go of Boyd. He might be Boyd’s, but Boyd belongs to Ives just as much. He’s too wrapped up in him to exist without him. The thought rattles loose around his skull and almost tumbles out of his mouth, but doesn’t quite make it. He’ll tell him later, when the Blood Drive is just a memory. This place, this dingy little motel, doesn’t deserve to have such a revelation spoken in its walls. For now, this is enough. He kisses him again.

“As soon as you can get it up again,” Ives murmurs against Boyd’s lips, “you’re going to fuck me real slow. Make me feel everything.”

“Oh, fuck, Ives…”

“Exactly.”

—

The sounds coming through the thin walls are painfully clear, Ives makes enough noise for two men and their bed is creaking rhythmically and obviously. Rasher, lying flat on his bed staring at the ceiling, tolerates them for a few seconds before sitting up. He snags his phone from the nightstand, fishes his cigarettes and lighter from his coat pocket, and heads outside. With the door shut, he can’t hear Boyd and Ives’ enthusiastic reunion; all he hears is the rain drumming on the roof and the distant highway. 

He leans back against the door and lets himself slide down to sit on the cold concrete. He lights up and sits with his knees up and his elbows atop them, the cigarette burning slowly between his fingers. He keeps his mind empty as he smokes it down and stares out at the world beyond. Sun-bleached grey road, brown-grey grass, rain-grey skies; everything seems sapped of color and vitality. This close to the Scar, he’s surprised anything’s left, but he suspects he’s seeing a corpse that simply hasn’t realized it’s dead yet. Once he’s smoked the cigarette to the filter, he stubs it out beside him and picks up his phone. He dials a number.

Julian answers on the fourth ring. “All finished?” he asks. Behind his voice, Rasher can hear the sounds of the roadies setting up a set piece, yelling and clanging and a shouted swear that makes him think someone hammered their finger.

“Yeah.” Rasher lights up again. The maw grumbles, but he ignores it. “You were right, Vermaak had Ives in a private lab.”

“Predictable little bastard, isn’t he?” Julian sounds smug at having been right. 

“Yeah.” Rasher takes a drag off the cigarette but doesn’t say anything else.

The moment stretches awkward and long. 

“Something amiss?” Julian finally asks.

“Yes. No.” Rasher sighs, blowing smoke through his nose. “Maybe.” The lab brought back bad memories, and all he wants is to hide from them in Julian’s arms. The lingering shreds of resentment that Julian never came for him, the trauma of the time he spent as a lab rat, the fading adrenalin of attacking the lab, everything he and Boyd talked about in the car before, the residual ache in his limbs from the transformation; it’s all tangling in him and twisting him up inside. He wants to be back with his own man, in his arms, seeking refuge from the world in his bed. Knowing that Boyd and Ives are fucking themselves stupid next door isn’t helping. After a moment, he mumbles, “I miss you.”

There’s a just-audible intake of breath from Julian before he says, “I miss you too.” This time he sounds almost surprised at himself, as if he can’t believe he’s admitting to having an emotion, and it makes Rasher smile a little. “Where are you, I’ll come find you in the morning.”

“Some flophouse near Junction City in Kansas. West Scar-side. It’s the, uh…” He cranes his head around, leans so he can just see the sign. “It’s the Rest-Eez Motel.” He leans back against the door. “See you in the morning, I guess.”

“Yes, I’ll—be _careful_ with that, you imbeciles!” This last is in response to a resounding crash Rasher hears through the phone.

Rasher snorts. “Good luck with whatever that was.”

“Brat.”

“Bye, Julian.”

He hangs up and goes back to staring out at the rain. Hearing Julian’s voice helped, he thinks, but not enough for him to be willing to go back in and listen to Boyd and Ives. He sits and chain-smokes half the pack, watching the sky get dimmer and the already-infrequent traffic turn nonexistent. By the time the streetlights and parking lot lights flicker on, little islands of orange in the blue-grey twilight, the road is empty. The rain has stopped. 

On an impulse, Rasher gets up and goes back into his room for his jacket, which he zips over the corset. After lighting one last cigarette he sets out along the road, walking just to walk, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets. He walks aimlessly along the side of the road, more interested in the act of walking than in getting anywhere. No cars pass him; the only sign of life he sees is a ragged coyote nosing the dried-out corpse of a roadkill deer. It flinches at the crunch of Rasher’s boots on the road’s shoulder, then bounds away into the shadowed scrub. Rasher watches it go, until even he can’t see it anymore. He sets off again and lets himself zone out to the sound and rhythm of his footsteps.

By the time he returns, full night has long fallen and the breeze has shredded the cloud cover, letting the moon shine bright over the road and barren fields. He feels a little better, a little more settled. The pain is better, too, his muscles reacquainted with their natural arrangement and no longer stiff from the hours of driving. He still misses Julian, but he doesn’t feel quite so tangled. He lets himself into his room. Boyd and Ives have either found some other way to celebrate their reunion or they’ve fucked themselves out: next door is finally quiet. Rasher tosses his jacket onto the table, his cigarettes and lighter following, and sits on the bed to unlace his boots.

His phone buzzes. He picks it up and sees Julian has sent him a file. He can’t help an awed little laugh when he sees what it is. Julian has sent him a _beautiful_ nude; he’s laid out flat on his bed, one arm following the muscled length of him to his groin, where his hand is clearly on his cock, black lace panties stretched over his knuckles. He’s wearing one of his drag necklaces, the heavy pendant hanging right between his tits. He makes for a femme Tom of Finland drawing, an irresistible contrast that the low quality of the image file itself doesn’t detract from in the slightest.

“ _Fuck_ , you’re gorgeous,” Rasher breathes. His phone buzzes again, and he laughs when he sees the text: ‘Thinking of you’.

In return, he sends Julian a picture of his hand on his erect cock, a tentacle twining around his wrist to curl over the head, accompanied by a single line of text: 

‘wish u were here’


	12. i'm always walking as somebody else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time to move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeehaw, welcome to the end of the road *fingerguns*. if u read this far, thank you v much, i had so much fun writing this beast and i hope it was as fun to read as it was to write. 
> 
> content warnings: none

Boyd wakes up wrapped around Ives as if he’d expected him to be taken in the night. He’s got his legs tangled with Ives’, both arms around his waist. Ives evidently felt the same: he’s got his arms around Boyd’s body and his head tucked under his chin. The morning sun streaming through the thin curtains over the window paints Ives in warm amber and cool indigo, catching in his long hair like spun gold. Boyd nuzzles the crook of his neck and kisses his shoulder. 

God, but Ives had been so _broken_ yesterday. In all their years together, Boyd has never seen Ives so hurt, so raw. It’s probably by design, Ives is too proud to let anyone see him break. But Boyd hadn’t even been convinced Ives could break; he’s always seemed so in control, so unflappable, even during that last catastrophic fight at Fort Spencer. The bear trap hadn’t come close to breaking him the way Vermaak evidently had, and the trap had nearly killed them both. Boyd wants to know what Vermaak had done, exactly, but he doesn’t need to know. He won’t ask unless Ives wants to tell him. He knows enough about what Vermaak had wanted, he’s seen the scars on Ives’ back. He can guess, and that’s as close as he wants to get right now. He has Ives back, and that’s all that truly matters. He’s well aware of how close he came to losing him, and it still manages to chill him, even with Ives back in his arms.

He’s known the answer to Rasher’s question in the car for a long time now. He’s never said it aloud, not to Ives, not to another person, not even to himself. A part of him had always been horrified by it, that he could love someone like Ives. No matter how much he needed him, Boyd couldn’t bring himself to admit the depths of his feelings. He never addressed those feelings, never looked too closely at them, hid behind a self-diagnosis of co-dependency and refused to admit that he needed Ives because he loved him, not just because he needed a fellow immortal monster. 

But having Ives torn from his side by institutional monsters who committed greater crimes than Ives could ever dream of forced Boyd to confront himself. The part of him that was horrified at the thought of loving Ives was silenced, perhaps for good, by the realization that life without him would be unendurable. And it was hypocritical of him, after all, to still think of Ives as a monster, when Boyd himself is hardly any better. He hasn’t fought against their shared nature for even longer than he’s loved Ives. What right does he have to hold any moral outrage that he’s fallen in love with a man he’s known for almost two hundred years, with whom he’s shared more passion than any other person, who has stood beside him and fed him with his own flesh and blood, just because that man kills to survive as Boyd himself does?

Boyd loves him, and he can no longer find it in himself to be ashamed of or horrified by that.

Boyd kisses his shoulder again, and this time Ives stirs, letting out a quiet sigh. He stretches a little, arching against Boyd, but makes no move to extricate himself from Boyd’s grasp. He just turns his head up, lips parting slightly. Boyd kisses him, at which Ives makes a soft sound of contentment. His hands slide up Boyd’s flanks before sweeping back down to settle on his hips. Boyd has always loved him like this, easy and warm with the last lingering wisps of sleep, all his edges for the moment smoothed. Ives’ hands slide forward to gently grasp Boyd’s ass. Boyd shifts onto his back, tugging Ives on top of him; lazy morning sex strikes him as a very good idea, and he’d welcome feeling Ives in him. Ives needs no convincing. Afterwards, lying there in easy, warm contentment, Boyd turns his head to whisper a declaration into Ives’ ear. 

Ives doesn’t hesitate to kiss him and whisper it back.

After they pry themselves out of bed and into the shower (where they wind up fucking again on the floor of the tub, Boyd riding Ives with one hand flat against the wall and the other tight on Ives’ shoulder), Boyd dresses and heads to the window. He twitches the curtain aside and sees the parking lot is every bit as empty as it was the night before. If anyone from Heart is waiting for them to leave, they’re not doing it from a parked car. Boyd turns back towards the bathroom. Ives is coming out, buttoning a wine-red waistcoat over a white shirt and black jeans, and Boyd openly admires him for a moment. He sees Ives’ mustache twitch.

“Anyone watching?” Ives asks. He steps up behind Boyd and slides his arms around Boyd’s waist. He tucks his hands under Boyd’s shirt.

“Not that I can see,” Boyd says, letting the curtain fall back in place. He turns his head enough to press his face to Ives’ hair and lays his hands over Ives’ wrists. They stand in silence for a moment, until a silhouette passes across the window and someone knocks at the door. Boyd feels Ives tense.

“It’s me,” Rasher says.

Boyd steps out of Ives’ arms and opens the door. Rasher greets him with a sour expression.

“Wish you two came with a volume control,” he says. “Have some mercy, you damn rabbits.”

Boyd turns bright red. Ives just gives Rasher the finger.

“Jealous?” he snipes. “When do we get out of here?”

“Slink should be here soon. Y’all can leave as soon as he arrives.”

“Hope he’ll be driving, or some of us are going to be shit out of luck.”

Rasher just lifts an eyebrow at him. Boyd somehow suspects he knows who’ll be the ones out of luck, and it won’t be Rasher and Slink.

“I recommend leaving the country,” Rasher says like Ives never spoke. “Longer you stay here, the better the odds of Heart finding out that you’re still alive. You don’t want them on your ass. You won’t escape them twice.”

Unconsciously, Boyd’s hand finds Ives’. Rasher glances briefly over his shoulder.

“Anyway, I’ll keep watch for Slink,” he says. “See if you can keep your hands to yourselves for thirty fuckin’ seconds.” He heads back out, closing the door behind him. Ives flips him off again.

“He’s probably right about Heart,” Boyd says after a moment. He sits on the edge of the bed. “We can’t stay in America anymore.”

Ives sighs. “Yes.” He sits next to Boyd, close enough to press their shoulders together. “The rest of the world seems to be functioning more or less normally, at least. Think Canada’s too close?”

“Probably. The Scar affected them, too, though not as badly. Heart has a presence there.”

They fall silent. After a moment, Ives glances sidelong at Boyd.

“Scotland’s lovely this time of year,” he says. “Or at least it used to be, I haven’t been back since… god, since the 1830s, probably. I left as a very young man.” 

“You homesick, Ives?”

Ives snorts. “No. But it’s not America, and so far as I know Heart doesn’t have enough of a presence there to drag us back here. Besides, Scotland’s beautiful. Mountains, desolate moors, the rolling highlands… and Glasgow’s more than big enough for us. We’d be able to hunt in safety.”

“You don’t have to sell me on it. Scotland sounds fine to me.”

“Good.” Ives sighs and flops backwards. “I’ll miss America in some ways. The credo of individualism above all has certainly done us favors. When people are allowed to fall through the cracks it gives the predators within those cracks plenty of prey.”

Boyd snorts. “There’s always England, I hear Austerity’s doing about as much good for them as American individualism does for us. Americans, I mean, not us specifically.”

“That’s the spirit.”

They fall silent again, this time for several minutes. Boyd shifts and leans back on his elbows. He’s tired, he and Ives spent more time fucking than sleeping and he’s feeling it. He feels the bed shift as Ives gets up and goes to the cooler, which Boyd had brought in last night with their bags. They eat in silence, shoulders touching, and Boyd can practically watch Ives recovering fully; his posture improves, his shoulders and back less bowed. It goes a long way to reviving Boyd as well, the familiar electric sensation of meat singing through his nerves. Once they finish Ives stretches out on the bed and lays his head in Boyd’s lap. Boyd links one hand with Ives’ atop his chest. Eventually they hear Rasher’s voice:

“‘Bout damn time you showed up.”

“Aw, did you miss me?”

Rasher’s reply is inaudible, and neither he nor Slink seem to speak for a moment. Ives starts to pushes himself up. On impulse, Boyd leans over and kisses him, long and lingering. They break apart at a brisk knock on the door.

“Come along, boys, time to leave!” Slink calls through the door. 

“I really hate that man,” Ives grumbles.

“Soon we’ll never have to see him again.”

“Not soon enough.”

They grab their bags. Slink stands on the other side of the door, tapping one booted foot impatiently. Rasher stands off to one side with his hands in his pockets. Boyd notices he seems to have slid back into his role as Slink’s right-hand man, a loyal attack dog going where his master points. He’d pity them if he didn’t know he and Ives are just as badly codependent, if not more so. Slink holds up a keyring with a single car key on it.

“Take this and go,” he says, pointing to a relatively nondescript black Honda parked next to the Gremlin. “Get out of America.”

“We’d already come to that conclusion, thanks,” Ives says, just this side of sneering. “Don’t keep in touch.”

“Oh, believe me, I wouldn’t touch either of you with a ten-foot pole. Now fuck off.”

Boyd takes the keys from him, and Slink steps to one side. Ives strides out to the Honda. Boyd gets as far as the edge of the awning before Rasher calls out to him. He turns to look at him. 

“You know the answer to what I asked you before?” Rasher asks. “In the car?”

Boyd holds his gaze for a moment, then nods. “Yes. I do. I have for a while, I think.”

“Mm.” Rasher sniffs and glances briefly at Slink. “I figured you did. You just hadn’t admitted it to yourself yet. Trouble with you immortal types, you take forever to figure anything out because you think you have all the time in the world.”

Boyd looks over to Ives, who’s tossed his bag into the trunk of the Honda and is now standing by the bonnet, looking over at them. Boyd’s heart gives a painful little thump; he’d come so close to losing him. He’d almost had to face eternity alone, without the one man who made it worth living beside him. Boyd loves him too much to countenance life without him anymore. He swallows. He turns back to Rasher.

“Maybe. But we do get forever,” he says. “Good luck.”

Rasher tips him a two-fingered salute. Boyd turns and goes to join Ives. He slings his bag into the Honda’s trunk next to Ives’ and sets the cooler beside the bags. He drops into the driver seat, Ives into the passenger seat. Ives looks questioningly at him.

“What were you and Rasher talking about?” he asks.

“The pitfalls of immortality,” Boyd says after a moment. He looks at Ives. “And the perks.”

“Hm.” Ives looks over at the highway. “Glasgow, then?”

“Glasgow.”

Boyd starts the engine. He puts the car in gear, drives out of the motel parking lot. Before long it’s a speck on the infinite horizon. Soon after that it vanishes in the rearview.

—

“Well, glad that’s over and done with,” Rasher says, stretching his back as best as the corset allows. Out of the corner of his eye, Julian sees him link his hands behind himself, lift his arms out straight, and pull his shoulders together, until his entire torso seems to pop. Julian’s pretty sure the loudest crack came from his sternum. Rasher relaxes from the pose with a pleased sigh. “Back to our regularly scheduled insanity.”

“Mmm.” Julian stares off down the road, though Boyd and Ives have long vanished from sight. What a disappointment they’d been, what a letdown. He hadn’t learned a thing in the end, aside from how much of a pain in the ass other immortals could be, and that wasn’t at all helpful. He’s not sorry to see them go, but he’s still so deeply disappointed. Missed opportunities always sting.

Rasher sighs through his nose. “All right, spill it,” he says. “Why the fuck did you want those two along? It’s not just because you thought they’d be fun, so don’t bullshit me.”

No point in prevarication anymore. “You saw how Boyd healed after the accident,” Julian says. “Take a wild stab in the dark.”

“You already have accelerated healing. You can already come back from the dead.”

“At Heart’s discretion.” Julian doesn’t even try to keep the bitterness from his voice. “They own my spare bodies, even though they’re _me_. I heal because of their technology. I reincarnate because they grow and store cloned bodies for me. If they decide to stop providing me with bodies, I become finite. Without them, I get one life to live and that’s it.” It burns like acid on his tongue, speaking aloud of his reliance on Heart, acknowledging how much he needs them despite the myriad ways they’ve screwed him over and will continue to screw him over so long as he lives under their thumb. It feels like an admission of defeat.

Rasher snorts. “Congratulations, you’ve figured out how the rest of us live.”

“But those two are immortal and indestructible without Heart, without their science and biotech,” Julian continues, ignoring Rasher. “They were immortal before Heart and they’ll be immortal after Heart. Boyd came back to life in the same body he started in. If I sustained an injury like that, I’d just wake up in a brand-new body. As convenient as that can be, without those spares I have nothing. I wanted to know how he did it. If I could figure that out, if I could replicate it for myself, for you, then we wouldn’t need Heart anymore. We’d be completely self-reliant.” He sighs as he gives voice to the crux of the matter, to the deepest reason for his disappointment: “They were hope.”

“Aw, Julian…” Rasher pulls him into a hug. “I’m sorry.”

“So’m I,” Julian mumbles, face pressed to Rasher’s neck. “I wanted to know what made them special, why they became what they are when you stayed human. You said it yourself, why did they get to become Superman? Both of us have eaten human flesh, but we didn’t become what they are. I wanted to know why. But I never got the chance to find out.”

They stand there in each other’s arms for a long moment. Then Rasher squeezes his waist.

“Come on,” he says. “We got shit to do, master of mayhem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> annabel slauson wins the race and boyd and ives lose their entire mind when they learns this.
> 
> come yell abt fictional gay cannibals on tumblr w me, i'm beastoftheblackhole.


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